


Cross Creek

by zoemathemata



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Big Bang Challenge, Case Fic, Gen, Wordcount: 30.000-50.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-22
Updated: 2011-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-14 23:56:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 48,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoemathemata/pseuds/zoemathemata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winchesters check in at Cross Creek Hotel to purge its ghostly guests. It is widely known that the hotel is haunted and every year thrill-seeking tourists check in to experience the supernatural, but as far as the Winchesters are concerned, there’s no such thing as a happy haunted hotel.</p><p>The hotel is managed by twins Oliver and Farrah, and while Oliver is happy enough to let them stay, Farrah is adamant they should leave. A presence that sleeps during the tourist season wakes in the deep, long dark of winter, and while Farrah’s been keeping it at bay for years, she doesn't know if she can ensure the brothers' safety.</p><p>The Winchesters refuse to leave and the twins reluctantly allow them to stay, with warnings that they shouldn't wander off by themselves or enter the maze, but the Winchesters have never been good at following other peoples' orders.</p><p>As the boys investigate the haunting and delve into the history of the hotel, they find out that ghosts are the least of their worries.  When Sam gets lost in the maze and the unknown presence takes an interest in him, they realize too late that they're in over their heads.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cross Creek

The young woman stands in the open door, arms crossed over her chest, shoulder leaning against the jamb. She’s wearing loose jeans and a bulky fisherman’s sweater that not only looks like it’s seen better days, but doesn't look like it was meant for her. The arms are too long, the collar stretched out of shape and worn. She must be one of the caretakers the locals talked about. Dean didn’t expect her to be so young. The way the locals had talked about them, Dean expected to find a couple of tired seniors whose only job was to sit in the hotel and make sure the pipes didn’t burst over the winter.

But the woman in the doorway looks to be in her mid twenties. Tall, sturdy. She’s what the midwesterners would call good farming stock.

And she does not look impressed to see the Winchesters pulling up the long driveway.

Dean and Sam get out of the Impala and Dean employs his best, most charming, shit-eating grin; bright teeth, crinkling eyes, the works.

Her expression doesn’t change.

“Hey!” says Dean conversationally. He’s undaunted. Winchester charm works on everyone. If she doesn’t fall for his good looks and easy nature, she’ll fall for Sam’s ‘strong but silent’ approach.

“Hey yourself,” she answers as they walk up the long path that leads to the double doors. Each of the rectangular cement stones is carefully cleaned off and salted, the snow piled evenly on both sides of the walkway. “You boys lost?” she asks. Her gaze is shuttered, measured.

She’s gonna be a tough nut to crack.

“Actually, we came all the way from Kansas to see this place, didn’t we Sammy?” Dean says easily, pouring on his best ‘good old boy’ behavior. The attitude that charms the old and young alike. Sam nods dutifully, ready to fall into whatever ruse Dean wants to use to play this out. They’ve done this so many times for so many different people that he doesn’t even really have to listen to Dean any more. He can focus on the surroundings, eyes taking in the old architecture of the large hotel, surrounding greenery that thickens and becomes more dense the farther from the hotel it gets, mountains circling up around them, pressing in.

It’s kind of claustrophobic. He didn’t expect it to be. He’s been in places with mountains before, but these loom over them.

“That’s a shame. We’re closed for the season,” she replies. “You boys have a safe drive down the mountain.” She’s pulling back and already has one arm swung around the door, ready to push it shut.

Dean pops a hand up on the door, holding it open. “Oh, we were just hoping that we could take a quick look around. Maybe stay for the night? Our parents, they had their honeymoon here and we’ve been hearing stories about it since we were little, how beautiful it was, how pretty. And wow, the ghost stories…”

The woman fakes a smile, lips curling up at the edges, but her grey eyes remain cool and impassive.

“As I said, we’re closed for the season. You’ll be more than welcome if you come back in the spring.”

“I promise, we’re no trouble at all. We just need a place to bunk down and Sammy here just wants to wander around with his camera. Loves to take pictures. He’s been yammering on about the mountains and the evergreens and the snow since we crossed the state line.”

Dean slaps Sam on the shoulder and Sam nods agreeably, not really sure what Dean said. He’s distracted.

He thinks he hears whispering. He glances around, trying to pinpoint where it’s coming from and that’s when he realizes, it’s coming from everywhere. He can’t make out any words, just the soft sound of consonants and drawn-out vowels. Sam catches the woman staring at him suspiciously, eyes narrowing. She turns back to Dean.

“Well, there’s a couple of B and B’s in town that’ll be more than happy to have you guys, especially off season. Myself, I recommend the Hanging Garden. Fran’s a spectacular cook and she’ll take good care of you.”

“Wow, that sounds great, but… it’s just that we really hoped to stay here, at Cross Creek. As I said, our parents honeymooned here and,” Dean ducks his head bashfully and raises his eyes up to her, nearly batting his eyelashes, “family legend has it that I was conceived right here.”

“How lovely. And it will be just as lovely in the spring. You boys have a nice day.”

She’s shoving the door closed and damn, she’s strong. Dean has a hard time getting his foot in the open slot and he feels an awful pressure as the door hits his shoe with the full force of her weight behind it.

“Fay?”

She turns her head and looks over her shoulder into the darkened hotel where the voice has come from.

“Who’s at the door?” asks the masculine voice

She turns back and gives Dean the evil eye. “Just some tourists. They’re heading on their way.”

“Why don’t you invite them in for a cup of coffee?”

She shoots her glare of death over her shoulder and Dean can see her jaw clenching as she comically widens her eyes in annoyance.

“Coffee would be great!” Dean exclaims and he uses the distraction to push the door open, knocking her off her balance and backwards a few steps into the foyer.

Sam and Dean blink at the abrupt change in light. While outside they had gotten used to the sunlight bouncing off the snowbanks, painting everything in a harsh, white glare, inside it’s dark, retinal burn painting dark blotches over everything. There’s a large chandelier suspended high above the foyer, unlit. The only light comes from the open door and the bank of windows on either side.

“You’ll have to forgive my sister,” a young man is saying. “She’s… shy.”

The woman snorts in outrage and both Sam and Dean take a moment to stare at the siblings together.

They must be fraternal twins, nearly carbon copies of each other except for gender. They have the kind of strong, fine boned features that look good on both men and women. Dark hair, fair skin and dark grey eyes adorn them both. They even appear to be the same height.

Or they would be if the man was standing upright.

He’s slightly bent over, arms slung through brace crutches, although he has no visible injuries. They’re even dressed similarly and Dean realizes it’s why her sweater doesn’t seem to fit. It’s clearly her brother’s.

While she stares at them with suspicion and outright resentment, her brother, named Oliver according to the locals, has a warm smile and warmer eyes. He’s glad to have company.

“Don’t let her get to you,” Oliver says good-naturedly. “She’s like this with everyone. I’m Oliver, and you’ve already met my sister, Farrah, but feel free to call her Fay. Everyone does.”

“Dean Winchester, and my brother, Sam.”

The men shake hands all around. When Dean offers his to Farrah, she looks down at it and then back up at him. She doesn’t uncross her arms from her chest.

Fay stands beside Oliver with her steely eyes. “We’re closed, Ollie. You know that. Every season, all season. No exceptions.” Her words are clipped.

“Aw, lighten up, Feefe. Rules are made to be broken,” he says as he looks at Dean and Sam both. “Am I right?” Not waiting for them to answer, he turns easily, using his crutches as pivot points and starts walking away, clearly favoring his right leg, a pronounced limp in his step. “Besides, I have a good feeling about you two and I’m never wrong.”

Fay takes the time to glare at the Winchesters again before she stalks off after her brother. After a moment when she doesn’t hear Sam or Dean she turns back around and huffs at them.

“Well? Are you coming or not?”

***

It’s clear from the way Farrah continues to glare at them as she starts the coffee, she’s not pleased.

They’re in the service kitchen and it’s miles of stainless steel, hanging pots, utility stoves and sinks, industrial sized fridges and walk in freezers. Most of it has the overly shiny, clean look of ‘unused,’ but a small corner is cluttered with some well-loved appliances, a butter knife, a plate with toast crumbs and a jar of peanut butter.

Oliver has taken a seat at a small stainless steel table set off to the side, one of it’s edges against a wall, and gestures for Sam and Dean to do the same. There are only two chairs and Oliver helpfully points out that Farrah can grab one from the dining room.

“Can’t you, Feefe?” Oliver asks and his charming smile puts Dean’s to shame. She purses her lips at him and exits the double set of swinging doors that must lead to the dining room. She’s back moments later with a navy-blue velvet upholstered chair that she sets down at the table next to the two utilitarian steel chairs with a decisive ‘thunk’.

Dean takes the steel chair, across the table from Oliver and Sam hesitates at the blue velvet one.

“I can stand,” Sam says, nodding his head toward Farrah.

Farrah is cradling three ceramic mugs, saucers and spoons and sets them down with a clatter on the table, looking pointedly at Oliver. He ignores her attitude and gracefully sets out the stoneware.

“I prefer to stand,” she replies tersely as she brushes by Sam and busies herself getting powdered creamer and sugar out of the fridge.

“We don’t keep perishables about, I’m afraid,” says Oliver. “Once the season’s over, we dig in until spring.”

“You guys don’t head down to town at all?” Sam asks as he finally takes his seat.

Oliver taps his right knee. “I can’t drive with this bad boy. It won’t bend all the way and my hip can’t take a car seat for more than a couple of minutes. Unless I’m stretched out in the back.”

Dean and Sam both look to Farrah. She’s leaning against the shiny countertop, arms crossed again, expression blank.

“I don’t leave the hotel,” she says simply.

“Ever?” Sam can’t help from asking.

She pauses and while she remains impassive, Oliver tenses slightly. “Never.”

“You could get stuff delivered,” Dean offers.

Farrah smiles but it’s not very friendly. “I’m sure you heard all about it town. No one comes to Cross Creek during off season.”

“Yeah,” Dean begins conversationally, “the locals were real surprised that Sam and I wanted to come up and see the place. Kept telling us to come back in the spring. They said,” Dean fakes a conspiratorial smile, lowering his gaze slightly, “that the place was haunted.”

“It is.”

Farrah’s tone brokers no argument. The industrial sized coffee maker finishes the pot quickly and she’s up and over at the table ready to pour, not wasting any time. She glances at Oliver with a question in her eyes. Oliver in turn stares hard at Sam.

“Leave a little room for creamer,” Oliver proclaims and then turns his gaze to Dean. Oliver taps his finger once, twice, and then a third time on the table top. “Sorry, Feefe. He’s a nuller.”

At their stunned silence, Farrah pours Sam’s cup of coffee, leaving a little room at the top and then eyeballs Dean herself.

“It’s just a guess, but I’ll say black.” She fills his cup to the top. She does the same to Oliver’s and he adds a heaping spoon of sugar.

“You two psychic or something?” Dean says, flicking his eyes over to Sam once.

“Oliver is. With most people,” replies Farrah. She pours her own cup of coffee and adds a little sweetener to it and then leans up against the counter again.

“Yeah?” asks Dean, brain already spinning with ways to prove him a fraud. “What’s that mean, I’m a nuller?”

“Means I don’t get anything off you,” Oliver says easily with a shrug. “Don’t know whether to apologize for that or not.”

“But me?” Sam asks.

Oliver turns his dark gray eyes back to Sam and Sam feels the sudden desire to hide. “You… You’re like a… kaleidoscope. Most people who are new to me are like that. I can see a lot of things but they shift and change and I can’t pin anything down. Nothing substantial anyway. I can get your coffee preference. Small inconsequential things like that. And… your brother’s face. It shows up a lot. And maybe…” He frowns, eyes going serious and sad. “A fire. A woman in a fire. On a ceiling?” He shakes his head and then sees the look on Sam’s face. “I’m sorry, I’m looking away now. I won’t look back.”

Oliver’s tone is easy, conversational, as though he didn’t just confirm his claims of psychic ability. Sam has the sudden feeling that this isn’t going to be the easy salt and burn they had anticipated.

“And you?” Dean asks Farrah, a bit of his charm slipping at Oliver’s mention of their mother burning.

“I’m not like Oliver,” she states.

“I thought that twins were supposed to be…” Dean fumbles for the word. “Twinly?”

The frown she gives him is comical, all sharp angled eyebrows and disbelieving eyes.

“We’re mostly the same,” says Oliver. “Except I’m good with people.” He gives a laughing-eyed wink to Farrah and she rolls her eyes. “Unfortunately for you,” Oliver continues, “it also means I know when people are lying. I know your parents never honeymooned here and that Sam really isn’t all that into photography. But you are interested in the haunting.”

“Why did you invite us in if you knew we were lying?” asks Sam.

“I get a good feeling off you. I wasn’t lying about that.”

Dean and Sam exchange their own sibling look, expressionless eyes and blank faces, although there’s clearly some kind of communication going on. Finally Dean speaks.

“We’re interested in haunted places. We look for them, visit them. Try to figure them out.” Dean’s always cautious with his words, but he feels doubly so now. He’s careful to tell the truth, which in itself is a new feat for him, while still trying to keep the entire story to himself.

It’s a hell of a lot easier to lie straight out.

Oliver’s nodding thoughtfully and Dean can’t tell if he’s passed scrutiny or not. “So you’ve seen a lot of haunted places then. All across America?”

“Yep. We study them. Sometimes we’ve even been able to put a ghost to rest.”

Oliver turns in his chair, carefully moving around his hip and stares at Farrah. She stares back at him and while the Winchesters have unspoken communication between the two of them, it’s nothing like this.

The way they look at each other, Sam can almost see energy flitting back and forth between them. It makes the hair on the back of Sam’s neck rise.

Farrah suddenly slams her coffee cup down. “It’s a bad idea,” she states firmly at Oliver.

Oliver looks back at Sam and Dean. “You’ll have to forgive us, we do this. Have conversations amongst ourselves. Especially off season, we fall into a pattern. You see, I’m quite interested in what you’ll be able to tell us about Cross Creek. If it’s similar to the places you’ve seen. If there’s any other place like it out there. If there’s anything that can be done. But, Feefe - Farrah - is adamant that you should leave immediately.”

“Off-season is a bad time for the hotel,” she argues. “You can come back and look around all you want in the spring and I’ll answer any questions you have, show you all the nooks and crannies. But winter … It’s just not a good time.”

That’s interesting. Dean can’t think of a house or haunted place they’ve ever been to that had good and bad seasons. Ghosts and poltergeists don’t usually have a sense of time. It’s all the same to them.

“Whereas I would argue that off-season is the best time to poke around Cross Creek,” Oliver counters. “It’s the time when the hotel is its true self. It’s haunted year round, but there are things…”

“Oliver,” Farrah warns.

“Things that only come out during winter,” Oliver finishes. “Things you won’t see any other time of year.”

“And that’s why they shouldn’t stay.” Farrah looks at Sam and Dean again. “Come back in the spring, I’ll show you whatever you want. I’ll put you in the nicest room, give you the grand tour. I’ll make sure you see all the ghosts. But go back down the mountain for winter.”

“Look, I appreciate the warnings, I do,” replies Dean. “But Sam and I… we’ve seen some bat-crazy shit in our lives and we’d like to stay.”

Farrah’s head is turned off to the side, tilted slightly as though she’s listening. Sam turns his head and he can hear the whispering again. It’s quiet and he can’t make out the words, but it’s there.

“You can hear them, can’t you?” asks Oliver, jerking his head at Sam. Dean’s head whips to look at Sam sharply and Sam nods absently.

“I think so. It’s like whispering?”

Oliver shrugs. “I don’t hear them. But Farrah does. She sees them too.” Oliver looks over at Farrah. “What are they saying, Feefe? Do they want them to stay?”

She’s silent for a few seconds, staring off into space with a freaky focused gaze that flicks around, as though she’s listening to several people. “Of course they want them to stay. They love having people around,” she says dryly. “Bunch of kids, of all you.” The lights in the kitchen flicker, as if in protest to the statement. Farrah rolls her eyes and the lights flicker playfully again. She shakes her head at the empty space. “It’s still a bad idea.”

The lights continue to flicker and the blender starts up, whirring gleefully and with nothing in the pitcher, it starts to topple. Farrah puts one hand on it and it stops immediately. Several drawers in the kitchen open and close and the hanging pots and pans start to clatter against one another. Though he knows it would be of no use, Dean’s hand itches for his gun. Sam’s tense in his seat. Their instinct is to go into battle mode, to start fighting, find some bones, salt and burn.

In contrast Farrah and Oliver appear nonplussed and unimpressed.

Cupboard doors bang on their hinges, the sink faucet turns on and an egg timer starts dinging off-rhythm madly.

Farrah huffs in annoyance. “If anyone messes up this kitchen, they’ll be helping me clean it later,” she warns. “And I’ll cancel Saturday night, don’t think I won’t.”

The lights come on and stay on, all drawers slide shut quietly. All cupboard doors close, pots and pans stop swaying. The faucet turns off. Farrah’s eyes scan the room. She’s like a mother who has just about had it with her kids.

Farrah turns to the men. “You’ve got them all riled up now.”

“What’s Saturday night?” Dean asks warily.

At his question, Farrah looks embarrassed. “It’s, uh, this thing. This thing we do every year…” She sighs. “Look it’s kind of like a disco, okay?”

Sam and Dean both kind of sit back in their seats. This is definitely not like their usual hunts.

“A disco?” Sam repeats.

“For them. The dead,” she says. Her tone implies that she feels she’s given enough information but she’s just confused the boys more. “Look, if you’re gonna stay, and I still advise against it,” she continues directing the last part to Oliver who shrugs, “then I’ll ask them if you can come Saturday night. If you’re really all that into haunted houses and ghosts, then you’ll probably like it.”

“We’ll stay.” Dean’s voice is steady and even. He doesn’t even have to look over at Sam who is nodding.

“They’re big boys, Feefe, they can look out for themselves.”

“I have my brain full keeping you and the rest of the deadites out of trouble, and now I’ve got them too.”

“I told you. I’ve a good feeling about this.” Oliver smiles at her.

“Yeah, I’ll remember you said that.”

***

The brothers don’t say anything to each other until they are outside by the car, pulling their duffle bags from the back seat and an assortment of hunting tools from the trunk. Their eyes meet over the hood of the car.

“What the fuck, man?” Dean finally says. It’s only mid afternoon, but the sun is hiding behind a mountain peek and the air outside has gone cold. Dean’s breath puffs out from his lips in lazy clouds.

Sam shakes his head. “I got nothin’.”

“A disco,” Dean says flatly.

Sam shrugs. “Got me.”

“And the two of them with their weird woo-woo shit.” He makes a dismissive motion with his hands and hitches his bag up higher on his shoulder, slamming the car door shut and heading back to the hotel. “They don’t know fuck all about haunted shit. _We_ know about haunted shit. Time to clear this place out.”

Sam smiles at Dean’s expressive face and copies his brother’s moves, slinging his own bag over his frame.

As he turns back to the hotel he hears it.

It’s not whispering this time.

It’s a low, drawn out groan.

He gets this image in his head of a slumbering giant stretching out its limbs.

Just when he thinks he might be able to make out more, the sound stops.

He looks up and realizes Dean is standing at the door waiting for him.

“You waiting for the bell-hop? ‘Cause I’m pretty sure he’s not coming.”

Sam shakes his head and hustles up the walkway.

***

Farrah’s right shoulder seizes and she drops the cup and saucer on the floor, small white pieces flying across the tile. She stares hard at the small mess.

“What is it?” asks Oliver.

“He’s waking up.”

The lights in the kitchen start flickering madly again, drawers open and close, pots and pans clang. There’s a desperation about it this time, a franticness. The voices start talking to Farrah all at once. Whispering, speaking, yelling, shouting. She covers her ears and shuts her eyes.

“I know!” she shouts into the kitchen.

Silence falls.

“He’s early,” comments Oliver unperturbed.

“Ollie. This is a bad idea. Those boys need to go home.”

“What if they can help? What if this is what we’ve needed all these years? What we’ve waited for?”

She shakes her head. “They can’t help. No one can.”

“You don’t know that. I’m telling you, I get a good feeling from them. This could be something for us. For you. We could leave Cross Creek,” he says lowly.

He should know by now, there’s no point in whispering. The ghosts always hear him. They cluster around Farrah, pressing in like frightened chickens in a hen house. They are shapeless at the moment, not bothering to make humanoid forms, instead existing in their usual state of amorphous energy. Although they are nothing but knots and clumps of ether, each one is a distinguishable and distinct presence to Farrah. She knows them all by name. Even the ones that don’t speak. She tries to keep her own feelings clamped down.

When she’s upset, they get worse. She pulls the cable-knit sweater around herself tighter. They can’t help it, she knows, but she hates the way they leech the warmth from her body.

“You can leave. You should leave,” she says. “They could take you down the mountain tonight, Ollie.”

“I’m not fighting you about this anymore. I told you. It’s not open for discussion. You stay, I stay.”

“Ollie…”

“No.” He stamps his crutch.

Farrah shakes her head back and forth, staring at the broken cup on the floor and the drops of coffee like they’re some kind of strange fortune telling runes. “We should make them go. It was one thing, when he was sleeping, but now he’s waking up and… It’s not safe.”

“You’ll keep us safe. You always do.”

She shakes her head again, wondering if it’s a blessing or a curse that Ollie can’t read her mind like he reads others. He can’t hear her thoughts unless she directs them at him. If he could read her mind he would know that it’s been getting harder and harder to keep _him_ at bay. Every year for the last six it’s been getting more difficult to bar the door against the wolf. In the summer she can pretend it isn’t so bad. She can fool herself into thinking it’s just the solitude and the cold that tire her out during the long off-season. During spring, summer and fall, when the sunlight is shining on her face and she’s able to be outside for a whole day, she can almost believe her own lies.

But winter is back.

This year she thinks it’ll have teeth.

If she tells Ollie, he’ll be more convinced than ever that he needs to stay with her, that he can’t leave her alone. He doesn’t realize that keeping him safe takes more and more from her.

She tilts her head to the side, thinking.

Maybe Ollie is right. Maybe the Winchesters are here for a reason.

***

Farrah’s waiting for them at the foot of the stairs, the wide expanse of the tiled floor of the grand foyer between them.

“Where’d your brother go?” asks Dean with a jerk of his head.

“He has a hard time with stairs. I’ll be showing you to a room. I assume you can share?”

“Yeah, no problem,” Sam answers but she’s already turned her back and is starting up the stairs.

“If you’re staying, there are rules.”

Her voice echos in the empty hotel, bouncing off the walls and floor. Dean tosses a smirk Sam’s way, but his brother isn’t paying attention.

“Rules,” replies Dean. “Sure, of course.”

She turns her head slightly and narrows her eyes. “I’m serious,” she counters. “Do not wander off. If you want to see a part of the hotel, let me or Oliver know. One of us will accompany you. And don’t give me ‘but-I-heard-something’ as an excuse. The place is haunted. You’re going to hear things. You don’t have to go looking for them. If you want to see the ghosts, I can arrange it. Also, there’s an english maze on the grounds.”

“Really?” Sam asks, his face brightening.

“Yes. Do not go in it. It’s off limits.” She stops on the first landing where the staircase breaks off into wings, one to each side. There’s a small window alcove and she gestures to the glass.

Both Winchesters crane their neck and look out the pristinely clean window. Thick evergreen bushes poke out from underneath a blanket of snow. The maze is laid out in geometric precision, perfect 30, 45, 60 and 90 degree angles that must be a stone bitch to prune into submission. Sam’s brain takes a quick snapshot of it and even as Farrah moves on, continuing up the stairs, he can feel the gears of his subconscious starting to slide and lock as they rotate, churning through potential solutions.

At the top of the stairs she takes a sharp right, trailing her hand lightly along the dark wood panelling as she walks. The upper levels is cold and Dean’s waiting for the tell-tale puff of his breath to let him know that ghosts are afoot.

“The usual places that you hear about in hauntings are perfectly safe at Cross Creek. The attic and the basement are fine. Our ghosts are pretty tame. They like having people about. In the basement, we’ve a pool but it’s is drained for the season, so there’s no real use going down there, although there’s a games room if you’re bored. There is also a sacred American Indian burial ground just on the outskirts of the hotel’s property. It’s quite lovely even in winter and if you have an interest in history, I can take you there. If have hiking boots, that is.”

She passes by several doors with numbers on them before stopping at room 4. The brass number is charmingly tarnished and she quickly brushes her fingers lightly over the metal three times before she taps the lock and then turns the handle. She sweeps into the room and waits for them to pass her.

“I’ll get you the key so you can lock it, although it won’t do any good against the ghosts. They’ll probably rifle through your stuff first chance they get.”

It’s a quaint hotel room. The Winchesters have seen more than their share of piss-poor, moldy, rank and scuzzy hotel rooms and this place is like the Taj Mahal. There are two plush queen beds and if those quilts weren’t stitched by a roomful of lovely grannies, Dean will eat them. The pillow cases are simple but clean. The furniture is solid and unobtrusive. Two night-stands, a desk, a sturdy chair, and a small table with two low cushioned seats finish off the room.

Farrah steps over to the side and flicks on the light to the bathroom. It’s pristine like the rest of the room.

“The bed linens might be a bit stale and I’ll have to bring up some towels. If you need more blankets there are some in the closet. I haven’t done preventative maintenance on the water heater that serves this area, so I may have to shut it down for a day when I get to it. I’ll give you fair warning when I do. I’ll also be doing preventative work on some of the heaters and lights, but honestly, with the way the deadites are, they’ll be on and off anyway.”

“Deadites?” Sam questions at her second use of the term.

“Yeah. You know, like that movie with Bruce Campbell.”

“You seem pretty okay with the ghost thing,” Dean says.

She turns her steely gaze on him. “You came here because the place is haunted. It didn't just get haunted overnight. And I grew up here, so yeah, I’m pretty okay with it.” She shifts back and forth on her feet, nervous. “Look, I know Ollie said that he got a good feeling from you and Ollie’s not been wrong yet but… It’s really not a good time for the hotel.”

“Winter, you mean.”

She nods at Dean’s words. “Yeah.”

“Oliver said you protect them. Protect them from what?”

She turns to Sam. Bites her lower lip. Looks away. “There’s something else here. At Cross Creek. It’s been here for years.” She rubs at her shoulder, squeezing and pressing the muscle of her upper back and up around to the very top of her collarbone. As soon as she realizes she’s doing it, she drops her hand. “I don’t know what it is, but I’ve always been able… keep it at bay, I guess. But…the last couple of winters it’s been …” her eyes drift past them to the window and she steps over, pulls open the drapes and looks down at the courtyard and maze. “I haven’t told Oliver. If he’s stubborn about going now, he’d be worse if he knew. But this winter… it’s early.”

“I - thought I heard something?” Sam hedges.

Dean’s head whips around to stare at him. “What? When?”

Sam grimaces. “Outside. By the car. It sounded like…”

“It’s waking up,” says Farrah. “I think it sleeps over the tourist season. I think that all the people here… I don’t know. I think it’s like they push down on it and keep it asleep.” She turns back to face them. “If you leave now, you could take Oliver with you. Once you got to town, he wouldn’t be able to get back up. No one will come back up during the winter and he can’t drive with his leg. It’s too far. And maybe after he’s had some time away, he would… he could… It would be so much better for him out there, in the real world. He doesn’t have to stay here.”

“What about you? Don’t you want to leave?” asks Dean.

The lights start to flicker, blinking rapidly. If any of them were epileptic it would be seizure inducing. The room, already cold, turns several degrees icier.

“I can’t leave. They need me.”

“The… deadites?” Sam questions.

She nods. “Yeah. If I leave, there’d be no one to keep it from them.” The lights steady out as if reassured by her words.

“How many…” Sam pauses, “how many are there?”

Her eyes flick around. Dean suddenly realizes she’s counting.

They’re in the room with them.

“Fourteen.”

Their eyes widen at the number. It’s rare, really rare, they find a place with so many. Dean can’t help but look over his shoulder and scrutinize every corner, searching for any sign. He itches for some rocksalt and a shotgun.

She frowns. “I’m not sure where everyone else is right now.” She shrugs. “Around. They’re always around.”

“There’s _more_?”

“Yes,” she says to Sam as though it were obvious. “There are about 35 or so regulars, and then a crowd of anywhere between…” she waffles her hand, “say 20 to 30 rotaters.”

“Rotaters?”

“Ghosts that come and go. Sometimes I only see them once. Some of them have been coming and going for as long as I can remember.” she laughs quietly. “Honestly, I don’t think Jonah is ever gonna stay put. He’s too happy roaming around. But he likes coming back every now and then, touch base.

“I could make you a list,” she says slowly. “If you come back in the spring. I’ll make a list of everyone I know. Names, birthplaces, death places, details. Anything you want. I’ll tell you what I know, what I see, what they tell me about where they are, where they go, where they’ve been… If you take Ollie down the mountain, I promise. I promise. Anything you want.”

Sam’s got his sympathetic face. The one that just screams to witnesses and victims _I feel your pain and want to help you. Tell me all your troubles_. “Dean and I… we know things too. We’ve seen a lot of things. We’ve stopped a lot of things.” he pauses, giving his words a chance to sink in. “We can help.”

“I only want you to take my brother down the mountain. I can handle everything else.”

“Just let us stay for a day or so, see how it goes, see if we can help.” Sam’s determined puppy dog eyes are valiantly working their mojo, trying to wear her down. Dean does his best to fade into the background and let her focus on Sam’s earnest eyes and open face. “We don’t just investigate hauntings,” Sam pushes on. “We fix them.”

The dead crowd around her again, pressing in and she shivers at the drop in temperature. “The ghosts are fine. They don’t cause any problems.” She warns Sam with her eyes. “I don’t want anything to happen to them. They just want to be here and they don’t do anything wrong.”

Sam nods agreeably. “Sure, of course. But the other thing? The one you protect them from, what about that?”

She worries her lip between her teeth. She’s not looking at them. She’s got her head tilted to the side.

She’s listening to them, they realize. Many ‘thems’ if the way she moves her head around is any indications.

 _Stay, stay, let them stay. Maybe they can help you stop it, stop him. More people is always good,_ it _doesn’t like more people. But we do. We can watch them and go through their things and read their books and touch their computers and see all the places they’ve been. Stay, stay, let them stay. Please, please. We want them to stay. Ollie likes them. Ollie-ollie-oxen-free says he has a good feeling. Stay-stay-let-them-stay._

She doesn’t like it when they all talk at once. It’s like being in a room full of shouting people only their voices sink right into her body, twisting and curling around with each syllable.

Sam can hear… something. He’s not sure what. It’s like whispering or rushing water or hissing wind. He takes a step toward her, almost unconsciously to get closer to the sound, to make it out. Dean’s hand on his arm stops him.

“Fine,” Farrah barks suddenly at the sprits and stiffens her spine as she turns back to the Winchesters. The hissing noise has stopped and Sam can only guess that the ghosts have made their point to Farrah. “Stay out of the maze,” she repeats, her tone brusque. “And room 43. Room 43 doesn’t ever get used. Not even during the busiest season.” She’s rubbing her shoulder. “Sometimes… sometimes the room tries to get you to go in. Don’t forget. I don’t go in that room. Even the deadites don’t go in that room.” She waits to make sure her words have sunk in. “You should think of this place like a tiny communist country. Unless I tell you you’re allowed to go somewhere, you’re not.”

She heads toward the door, stopping just inside the room. “Ollie and I have dinner around six-ish. Breakfast is whatever we want to grab, lunch is the same. The coffee’s usually fresh all day because we both like it. Dinner is sit-down. It’s not fancy and I can’t promise that either one of us is a great cook, but you can come.” She hesitates for a moment and continues. “If you have something small, something… like a watch or a trinket that you like, or keep with you a lot, you should give it to Ollie. If something happens, or you get lost, he can use it to find you. We live in the staff area on the main floor, close to the kitchen. Ollie’s usually around there. I’m all over the hotel doing maintenance and the like. Ollie will know where I am if you need me.”

As soon as she’s gone Dean turns to Sam.

“Why didn’t you tell me you heard something?”

It’s practically an accusation. Dean’s throat is tight and Sam knows it’s not with anger, but worry.

Sam shrugs. “It was just really quick. Out by the car, I don’t know what it was. It sounded like someone stretching. And then, when the ghosts were talking to her now and in the kitchen before, I can hear them a little too.”

Dean watches him for a moment. “You see anything?”

Sam shakes his head this time. “No. Nothing. But… I think she’s right Dean, I don’t get a bad feeling from the ghosts. But what I heard outside… that was different.”

Dean crosses his arms over his chest and eyeballs Sam.

Dean’s always for the hunt. If it breathes, he’ll smother it. If it moves, he’ll stop it. If it bleeds, he’ll bleed it dry. He can kill just about any kind of monster using anything he happens to have with him at the moment. He’s not afraid of monsters. But something is going on with Sammy and he doesn’t know what it is. He doesn’t know how to stop it, how to fight it, how to make it go away. And that scares the shit out of him.

“That’s it,” Dean declares suddenly. “We’re outta here.”

“What? No, Dean,” protests Sam. “It’s not like the visions. I don’t know what it is but I don’t think it’s dangerous.”

“Uh-huh,” Dean says, unconvinced.

“I can do this, Dean,” Sam says, planting his feet and standing his ground. “This?” He points to his brain. “Whatever is going on with my head, it isn’t going to go away and we gotta figure out a way to deal with it. Maybe we can even use it. We came here to do a job and I can do it.”

Dean rubs his hand over his lips and jaw. “I dunno, Sammy.”

“We’re already here, they’re letting us stay. Let’s do this.”

They stand in a semi-face off for a moment until Dean finally points a finger at him. “If you get anymore weird shit going on with that skull of yours, you tell me, and I mean yesterday.”

“I will. I promise.”

Dean spends another four seconds looking somewhat unconvinced before he nods and starts pulling gear out of his duffle bag.

“So, we know we got a shit load of ghosts hanging around here. At least 35. We gotta figure out what’s keeping them here. Some of them could have died here and so we could get lucky and actually salt and burn a few, but if there were that many deaths, something tells me this wouldn’t be such a tourist hotspot.”

Sam’s nodding and pulling out his laptop. “I’ll go through my notes again and maybe tonight at dinner we can ask Farrah and Oliver a bit more about the history of the hotel. Maybe Farrah will still give us that list of ghosts.”

“What is with the two of them? Weird psychic twins? Seriously? Some families are fucked up.”

Sam gives him a pointed look which Dean dismisses with a hand. “We’re not exactly normal, but we’re not that level of bizarre-o.”

“I’ll remember that the next time I find your gun in my shoe.”

“Whatever. All I’m saying is, that shit is weird. He’s psychic and she talks to ghosts? I bet you twenty bucks that when we get down to the bottom of this place it’s gonna turn out that Freaky Farrah and Odd Oliver have been snatching tourists, dismembering them and Hannibal-Lecterizing them at the hotel buffet for years. And then we’ll have a whole town full of ‘but they were such nice and quiet kids’.”

Sam huffs in laughter at Dean’s expression. “Hannibal-Lecterizing them?”

“Shut it. It’s a verb now.”

***

They wander around the hotel for a few hours, completely ignoring Farrah’s warning and splitting up like they always do. Dean’s got the EMF reader and is systematically going through the hotel in sections, trying to get a reading.

For a place that’s supposed to be haunted the EMF is suspiciously quiet.

Dean checks out the attic, the upper floors, pausing at each room. The doors are all locked, which he finds odd. If this place is closed for the season, why lock the doors?

It’s his least favorite part of a case. Not that he’s thought much about it, but on the chance occasions that he has, this part here, after they’ve concluded a place is worth a visit and is a good prospect for a hunt, and they’ve managed to ingrain themselves in the situation by hook or by crook, and they’re just waiting for the shoe to drop… it sucks. At this point, they’ve done most of their research and they have to wait for something to happen. Something to lead them to bones to burn, or let them know they’ll need hex bags instead. Or wait for the next demon attack or vampire victim… For a job that’s steeped in danger and the unknown, fraught with the supernatural and freaky acts of nature, there sure is a lot of waiting around doing fuck all.

He has to pass by room 43 on his way back to the room to meet Sam and he’s not a total idiot. Despite the fact that he thinks Farrah’s warnings were over the top and a bit of a hard sell, he’s not about to go in there itching for trouble. He eyeballs the door. There’s nothing special about it. Looks like all the other doors he’s seen today. He inches closer to the door and holds the EMF reader up to the wood.

Nothing.

He huffs. Figures. The place is haunted, he’ll give it that. While the EMF hasn’t given him anything yet, Sam heard the voices and they've got enough anecdotal evidence to point pretty clearly at a run of the mill haunting. Years of bringing in the tourists have probably trained Farrah and Oliver to ham it up, hand out the dire warnings and significant looks. He taps the EMF to make sure it’s working and satisfied that it is, turns his back on the door.

He hears the bolt slide in its casing, unlocking the door.

He turns back and the door is slightly ajar.

Although he knows he’s alone, he can’t help the automatic reflex to look around and check for someone else. He holds the EMF in front of him and is surprised when the lights start to flicker. They don’t flicker the way the normally do. Usually they inch up the scale, two lights, three lights, six, nine - until the entire LED display is ignited with red.

This time the LED lights are pulsing. Up, down, up down. Like a heart beat on an EEG monitor.

And that’s… odd.

His eyes flick around the room from the doorway. It looks just like their room only it’s covered in dust and has the stale scent of years of abandonment. Farrah wasn’t lying when she said this room wasn’t used. The bedspreads are dated, even for a place like this, and the art on the walls is even more-so. If he had to guess, he’d say the room hasn’t been used in at least thirty years.

It’s cold.

The cold seeps over the doorway into the hallway, and even though he hasn’t stepped into the room, he can see his breath puffing out. As soon as it crosses the threshold of the room it disappears.

He’s not sure for a moment if he should bring Sam to this room. Normally the first thing he’d do is go get his brother and they’d both bust in with rock-salt and hex-bags and see what happens. But now with Sam’s… thing, his weird psychic thing, Dean’s not sure if that’s a good idea.

He’s standing there thinking when he sees something poking out from under the bed. It looks like a little toy horse, one of those multicolored horses that little girls go crazy about. Dean can see the top of it’s head, part of a bright pink and blue mane and the curve of its back.

Well, someone's been in there a little more recently than he first thought. He thinks those girly horses weren’t around until at least the 80s.

His lips curl in amusement. He’ll ask Sam. Sam will probably know simply because he knows obscure shit like that and then Dean can ride his ass for weeks about Sam knowing all about girly horses with pink hair.

His eyes travel over the door frame and threshold. Of course being told he can’t go in has left him with a burning desire to do just that. It’s not like he doesn’t deal with this kind of freaky ass shit every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

He’s just about to take a step in when there’s a horrible screaming sound, like too much wind being pushed through a small, leaky pipe and the heavy wooden door slams in his face, knocking him straight on the chin. He stumbles back a few steps regaining his balance. He touches his lip and checks his fingers for blood.

“Motherfucker,” he mumbles, pleasantly surprised when his fingers show up bloodless. He glances back up at the door.

 _Don’t_

The word is written in some kind of liquid on the door, only really viewable when the light hits it right. He reaches out and touches it. Rubs his fingers together.

It’s not blood, which frankly is a surprise. But it’s not plain water either. It kind of smells like… babies. Like the warm, powdery smell of baby oil or baby shampoo. Pleasant. Soft. Innocent.

He looks sideways at the door. “I can’t wait to kick your haunted ass,” he mutters at it before he walks away.

***

Sam heads to the basement first and pokes around, looking for a cellar, dark corner, unused area; anything that usually screams _here’s where all the haunting takes place_. He’s got the video recorder out, looking for orbs, glowing lights or manifested spirits.

Nothing.

He ambles by the empty pool, the prevalent scent of chlorine permanently pressed into the fixtures. Deck chairs are neatly stacked in the corner, rope lane dividers are reeled up on large wheels. Water toys, flotation devices all securely stowed in large bins.

So far it’s the most boring haunted hotel ever.

He checks out a small gaming room where the only horror to be found is a preternaturally huge collection of jigsaw puzzles. He moves up to the main floor, roaming through the large dining room off the kitchen. The tables and chairs are all sorted to one side of the large expanse, leaving an empty, hollow space for the rest of the room. It’s dark and he can’t find the light switch for the large chandeliers, but there are large portrait windows on the north side of the room and they let in enough of the fading daylight for him to navigate around easily. He thinks he sees a few orbs through the small display screen of the camera but when he pans the camera around, they disappear. He pushes through the swinging doors into the kitchen and finds Ollie still seated at the small table, reading a book and drinking coffee. Sam can smell something wonderful cooking and it occurs to him that he can’t remember the last time he had a meal that he didn’t order off a menu.

“Checking out the place?” Oliver asks.

“Yeah, I hope that’s okay,” Sam says more for conversation than anything else.

“I won’t tell Farrah you’re by yourself. You better hope she doesn’t find out or you and your brother will get a tongue lashing,” he says with a hint of humor.

Sam has the grace to look embarrassed. “Yeah, she mentioned it when she took us to our room.”

Oliver takes a sip of coffee. “Oh, I’m sure she did. She’s quite adamant about certain things. Find anything?”

Sam takes a seat at the table. “Nah. I thought maybe I saw some ghosts but no dice.”

“Hmm, probably following Farrah around or hiding. They like to play hard to get sometimes.”

“Your sister read us the riot act about where we can and can’t go. What about you?” asks Sam.

“What about me?”

“Any warnings or rules for the hotel?”

“No,” Oliver says with a small laugh. “That’s Farrah’s department. No one knows the hotel like she does. I do better with people.” He folds the page of his book over and sets it on the table. He makes his way over to the stove, limping heavily as he doesn’t bother with his crutches for the short distance. His expression is thoughtful as he takes the lid off and stirs something. “And I would like to apologize for earlier.”

Sam’s brow furrows. “For what?”

“When we were having coffee and I was looking at your mind. I obviously found something very… sensitive and I’m sorry about that.”

Sam nods in acceptance. “So, you’ve, I mean, you both have been able to… do stuff your whole lives?”

Oliver bobs his head as he makes his way back to the table with his unsteady gait. “Yeah. I don’t remember not being able to know things about people. I think my parents noticed it when I was about five or so? And Farrah, she’s always been able to talk to the ghosts. My father could as well. He was the caretaker at Cross Creek before Farrah and I took over. Talking to the dead runs in the family so it was pretty much a given that one of us was going to be able to do it so it wasn’t exactly news when Farrah started talking about her invisible friends. I think he was surprised that I couldn’t as well, but I never had any luck with the dead. Just the living.”

Thinking about his own uncharted foray into psychic abilities, Sam leans forward. “What can you see about me? About what I can do?”

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea for me to look.”

Sam’s stomach rolls over. “Do you see something bad? Wrong?”

Oliver shakes his head. “No, not that, it’s just… I have the feeling you want a very specific answer from me and I don’t think I’ll be able to give you one. I’ve met other psychics before. Mostly low level ones, some didn’t even realize they were a little bit touched by it. They just assume they are good at reading people or exceptional lucky or just intuitive. It’s not that it’s harder to read other psychics. We’re all kind of like broadcasters. But people who aren’t psychic broadcast very cleanly. Other psychics tend to broadcast… differently. Like I’m looking through water. A lot of water.”

“Anything you can tell me. Please?”

Oliver purses his lips and sits back in his chair, eyeballing Sam without speaking for a few minutes. “They were latent. Asleep for a long time, your abilities. And it’s… ironic that it’s you, because your whole life you’ve been chasing normal while your brother and your… father?” Oliver questions and Sam nods. “They have been chasing after monsters. And you’re afraid you’re one of them.”

It takes the air right out of Sam’s lungs to hear someone else speak his fears out loud, and a stranger at that. He is afraid. He’s afraid that underneath his exterior lurks something that’s waiting to be set free. He’s afraid to talk to Dean about it, knowing that Dean will simply scoff and tell him that he’s not a monster, he’ll never be a monster. Dean will tell Sam all the things he thinks Sam wants to hear, needs to hear.

But all Sam really wants is for Dean to acknowledge the truth. They don’t know what’s going on in his head. And it’s a little scary.

“Am I?” he hedges finally.

“No,” answers Oliver easily, quickly and the speed at which he answers relieves Sam. “There but for your brother go you.”

Sam’s eyebrows come together. “What do you mean?”

“I get the sense that you were meant for something, something… monumental. Pieces being set out, plans being put into motion over long stretches of time and the culmination was to be…unheard of. But your brother was the unknown variable.” Oliver reaches out and places a hand over Sam’s, his dark grey eyes flickering back and forth as he tries to see deeper into Sam. “Dean is so ingrained into you. From a very young age. All I see is Dean, Dean, Dean. You’ve pulled away and left. You will continue to pull away and return. But you will always have him as your center. Your powers are a coal mine and Dean is your canary.”

“I don’t know if I’m okay with that,” Sam says without thinking.

“Doesn’t matter if you are or not. That’s the way it is,” he finishes, leaning back in his chair. “But the worst thing to do is to shut your eyes and stick your head in the sand. Pretending it isn’t there doesn’t make it go away.” Oliver counsels. “Now, did Fay tell you about dinner time?”

Surprised by the change in subject, it takes Sam a second to nod. “Um, yeah. She said we were welcome?”

“Yep. Hope you like stew.”

He has a quick recollection of what Dean said earlier, betting him they’re going to find out that Oliver and Farrah are the real creatures at Cross Creek.

Oliver laughs sharply. “Hannibal-Lecterizing? Is that even a word?”

It occurs to Sam it’s probably not best to think those kind of things around a psychic.

“Oh, I, uh… he didn’t mean it, I mean, neither of us think… he was just making a joke.”

Oliver waves him off with a hand still laughing. “I’m honestly flattered anyone would think we’re that enterprising. I can barely get around with my leg and Farrah’s just too boring.”

Sam lets himself laugh along at the suggestion, finding Oliver’s good mood infectious. “Yeah, I guess so, huh?”

“I might have to tease your brother about it at dinner tonight.”

***

Like the boys they are, they end up milling about the kitchen waiting for dinner to be served. Oliver’s easy enough to chat with and he keeps the conversation light as they wait for Farrah.

Dean tells himself he just hasn’t had the chance to tell Sam about what happened upstairs outside room 43, but in his heart, he knows that’s not entirely true.

He’ll tell Sam tonight and they can go back and check it out. Together.

By six-twenty Oliver proclaims that dinner is served whether Farrah shows or not. He scoops up three healthy servings of stew and accepts gratefully when Sam offers to carry it to the table for him.

“Uh, should we go find Farrah?” Sam asks.

Oliver shakes his head, blowing on a mouthful of stew on a spoon. “Nah, she’s lost in what she’s doing right now. She’ll figure out she’s late soon enough.”

“You can tell? From here I mean?”

Oliver nods at Sam’s question, carefully chewing his hot mouthful of stew and swallowing before speaking. “With Fay? Yeah, unless she doesn’t want me to know where she is and what she’s doing, I know. Of course, turnabout’s fair play and it’s the same for her. But we’re pretty good at shutting each other out of we want privacy or sometimes you just want to be left the fuck alone.” His tone is good natured and it really does seem like he’s okay with the weird situation that is his life.

“So, I hope you guys enjoy the stew. It’s an old family recipe. Been used for generations.”

Sam blushes a little at Oliver’s tone. He’s clearly trying to get a rise out of Dean. Dean grunts in a partial acknowledgement and keeps eating.

Like Sam, he can’t remember the last time he didn’t eat something that didn’t come from a menu. There’s something nice about sitting down at a table that wasn’t set before he got there and doesn’t have a bucket holding ketchup and mustard, salt, pepper and horseradish. And when Oliver had directed them to the fridge to get their own drinks… well that was damn near domestic for the Winchesters.

“We can’t bring in fresh over the winter, so all of our goods are frozen. But the meat is local,” continues Oliver. He lowers his voice. “Home grown.”

His tone makes Dean look up and lock gazes with Sam, spoon halfway to his mouth. Oliver shovels in another mouthful of hot stew. “Nothing like it. Keep the freezer well stocked so we don’t have to worry about running out. Of course, with you here now, there may be a shortage.”

Dean is giving Sam a ‘What the fuck?’ look and is starting to eyeball his stew warily. Sam doesn’t even bother trying to hide his grin.

“What are you yammering about?” Farrah interrupts as she comes into the kitchen. She makes quick work washing her hands at the sink and is then doling out her own helping of stew.

“No dumplings?” she questions.

“I don’t know the recipe since you won’t write it down,” Oliver replies.

“Jesus, that’s lazy, it’s only got four ingredients and you could just pluck it from my head!”  
Again, she doesn’t sit with them but instead leans against the counter as she eats. “So what were you yakking about? The meat? Are we running low? Ollie, you’re supposed to keep an eye on the supplies.”

Oliver is chuckling at her fishwife nagging. “Fay, we’re fine, I was only giving Dean a hard time. He thinks we’re Hannibal-Lecterizing guests.” Oliver waggles his eyebrows at Dean who immediately gives Sam the hairy eyeball.

“I didn’t tell him! He read it from my head,” protests Sam at the same time Farrah says, “Jesus, that’s gross, what kind of sick idea is that?”

That’s when Dean realizes everyone’s looking at him. He shrugs. “You don’t even wanna know half the shit we’ve seen. And humans are always the worst.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” says Farrah around a mouthful of stew. “I made sure your radiator’s on so you won’t freeze tonight. I’ll bring up some towels before bed. And I put the room key on the bed, but keep in mind it won’t keep the deadites out. And they’ll snoop.”

“Yeah, pretty much the only person the lock is good against is me,” says Oliver and he holds up his glass. Without being asked, Farrah goes and gets the soda from the fridge and fills it.

“I suppose you have a master key?” Dean asks.

“Farrah is the master key,” replies Oliver. “None of the doors in Cross Creek are locked for her.”

“That thing you did,” says Sam. “When you touched the number of our door before you turned the handle, that was you unlocking it.”

“Yeah.” She doesn’t elaborate.

“Have you always been able to do that?”

Farrah considers Sam’s question for a moment. “For as long as I can remember, yeah. My dad could do it too.”

“Even room 43?” Dean asks.

She doesn't flinch when she flicks her eyes to him. “Even room 43.” She huffs. “Especially room 43.” Her tone is dry, rueful.

“I walked by it today,” he continues.

“I know. In addition to being snoops, the dead are gossips.” She thinks for a second. “Tattlers might be a better word. You took a chance going there by yourself.”

“Maybe.” He decides to push that luck a little farther. “I saw something, under the bed?”

Oliver puts his spoon down and the way he’s clearly trying not to look at Farrah is just as obvious as if he turned around and stared at her.

“Yeah,” she murmurs. “My toy. I dropped it there.”

“You’ve been in there?” questions Sam and even Dean is sometimes surprised at how sympathetic he can look. “I thought no one went in.”

“It told you, the room… it can lure you in. I went in once. A long time ago.” She puts her dinner down on the counter, unfinished.

“What did you see? What happened?” asks Sam.

She shakes her head and they’re not sure if the gesture means she doesn’t remember, she can’t talk about it, or she won’t. She rubs her hands down her jeans, a nervous gesture which looks odd on her. “Uh, I gotta finish putting the air filtration unit for the north side back together.”

“It’ll keep,” says Oliver. “Stay. Finish your dinner.”

“Nah. If I leave it, Charlie’s libel to filch some piece I need.”

Oliver nods, his expression indicating he’ll concede this one. “I’ll toss the leftovers in the fridge and you can have some later if you’re hungry.”

She tosses a half-hearted ‘thanks’ over her shoulder as she leaves through the back exit. There’s an uncomfortable silence after she’s gone until Dean speaks.

“Something I said?” he jokes awkwardly and Sam gives him a look.

Sam decides to start off with a safe question. “So, Charlie? One of the deadites?”

“Yeah. He’s young. Seven or eight I think. He loves to follow Farrah and poke around in stuff and he tends to hoard things. The dead can’t usually pick up large things, but little things they’re good with. And Charlie just loves to tinker. Little boys. You know,” Oliver finishes with a shrug. “But you really want to ask about room 43. It’s better if you ask me and not Fay. As you can see, she doesn’t like to talk about it.”

Dean and Sam exchange a look and then a shrug before Dean says, “Tell us what happened.”

Oliver carefully spins his glass in a slow circle on the table as he gathers his words. “Earlier, when you said you’ve sometimes been able to put ghosts to rest, that’s the tip of your iceberg, isn’t it? You… hunt things. You kill things, don’t you?” Oliver won’t look up at them as he speaks, as if he’s afraid they’ll contradict him.

“We do,” affirms Dean.

Oliver weighs Dean’s assured answer and then he speaks. “I only know what I saw, what I heard. As far as I know, she’s never told anyone what happened once she was inside. Not even me.”

“And you can’t…” Dean begins and then makes a weird twirling motion with his fingers around his brain. Sam guesses it’s supposed to indicate Oliver reading Farrah’s thoughts but mostly, it’s just a crazy Dean gesture. Oliver seems to get it and shakes his head.

“No. I mentioned before that we can… keep stuff from each other. She keeps that part of her memories deep. Very deep.” He pauses for a moment. “Once, when we were younger and I was at that age … you know that age that teenage boys think they know everything, think we can solve anything and you’re just so full of … self importance that you’re just _sure_ that if everyone would get the hell out of your way, you could fix it all?”

Dean’s expression doesn’t change but Sam is nodding knowingly, a sheepish smile playing on his lips.

“I tried to take a peek, in her thoughts,” Oliver continued. “It’s hard to explain, but to me, Farrah’s mind is like… it’s like the maze out back, only I know all the twists and turns and dead ends. And I know where she keeps those memories and I thought if I could just _see_ them, I could fix it. Find out what’s in that room and fix it.”

It’s quiet. Oliver continues to spin his glass slowly. It makes a weird scratching sound against the table top, but it’s strangely soothing. Dean’s eyes flick over to Sam and Sam shrugs in return. Dean tips his head slightly, trying to push Sam to push Oliver and Sam shakes his head once. Dean rolls his eyes.

Oliver finally continues on his own. “That part of her memories was… very well guarded. I would guess that she doesn’t even think of it herself. Or at least, if she does, she only thinks of half parts, vague impressions like remembering a visit to a museum. You remember getting there, seeing one or two things, maybe something blue and red, and then leaving but you don’t go through the whole trip in your mind. I only brushed up against it, the slightest touch…” He rubbed his fingers against the table top lightly. “It was dark. And cold. Very cold. In here.” He taps his forehead. “She was three floors down and she started screaming at me, pushing at me. And then it was like she slammed the door against my head. She came barreling through the hotel and when she found me, she punched me in the face.” He rubs his jaw in remembrance. “Told me if I ever did that again she’d never speak to me, cut me out forever. I think she meant it.”

“What do _you_ remember?”

“We were six. I remember watching tv and then feeling her disappear. We always knew where each other were, we hadn’t learn to block anything at that age. Of course, there wasn’t anything to block, we were six and our lives consisted of eating and playing, reading with our mom, making snowmen…” he shrugged. “I was just sitting there and she was gone. And it made me feel sick so I went to my room and lay down on my bed. I must have fallen asleep because my mother came in later and asked if I wasn’t feeling well and then she asked where Fay was and I told her she was gone.”

Oliver frowned, dark eyebrows coming together sharp against his forehead. Sam found himself leaning in slightly to listen to him speak. His had one of those soothing voices like narrators for The Discovery Channel: low, precise, smooth.

“I think it took a while for her to understand what I meant and by the time my father came back from his trip to town, it had been hours. My mother had been searching the hotel for Fay and couldn’t find her. My father came into my room and I remember him kneeling next to the bed and asking me where she was and I kept telling him I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I didn’t know. He just kept saying the same thing over and over again, very low, very calmly. ‘where’s your sister, where’s your sister, you know where she is, tell me where she is.’ I don’t know if it was a form of hypnotism or if he was using his own gift to see into mine, but I remember getting really sleepy while he was doing it.”

 _You know where she is, Oliver. You know where she is.  
I don’t know.  
You know where she is, you know where she is. Where is she?  
Daddy, I don’t know.  
Tell me where your sister is._

“I don’t know where it came from but I ended up blurting out, ‘room 43.’ And it was like… Looking back on it, I think he knew she was in there but he wasn’t going to go in, he couldn’t go in. Unless he was absolutely sure she was in there.”

“So he went in and found her there?” Dean asked.

“Not right away. There were… preparations that had to be made.”

Dean was all ears. “What kind of preparations?” Any details may help them figure out what they were dealing with.

“Symbols on his body and a special drink he had to take. And it had to sit overnight. I remember my mother was yelling. She wanted him to go in immediately and he kept trying to explain it didn't work that way. I have his journal with the writings. I can show you if you like.”

“Yeah,” Sam nods. “That’d be great.”

“Don’t tell Fay. She doesn’t know I have it. My dad gave it to me.”

“Why?”

“In case she ever has to go in there,” says Oliver lowly. “It’d be the very last thing on earth she’d ever want to do, but my dad said that I had to know how to keep her safe if she went in there. He said the room was too good at luring people in and… that maybe someday it would be able to take someone and if that happened either he or Fay would have to go in to get them. And if he was gone or dead, it would have to be her.”

“What about you?” Sam’s always been the curious one.

“I asked that too. He took a long time to answer. He said that if Fay couldn’t do it, if she wasn’t here and there was someone in there… he said that without someone like me on the outside, an anchor, he called me, I would likely not come back out. But he said it was different for him and Fay, and especially with someone like me on the outside. I think that there has to be someone to tether them and the way my dad talked about it, I make a very good tether.”

“So, your dad,” encourages Sam. “After all the… preparations, he went in and found her?”

“Yeah. He was in there a long time. A long time,” Oliver repeats. “I was waiting outside with my mom. She expected him back right away and she was just standing there, holding my hand. I remember telling her she was holding it too tight.” He smiles sadly. “And so she sat down and put me in her lap and we waited. I fell asleep, it took so long. When they came out… I was scared. I’d never seen anyone look like that, especially my dad. He was sick-pale, chalky white and he had Fay, holding her so tight against his chest. He was sweating and shaking and my mother asked him what it was, what he saw and he just shook his head. As far as I know, he never told her.”

“And Farrah?”

“My dad put her to bed and she just lay there. I thought she was dead at first, I still couldn’t hear her thoughts, it was like she was… just not there. She just lay there, eyes wide, staring at the ceiling, barely breathing. And cold, real cold. I remember getting into bed with her and I tugged her hair to get her to look at me and my mother yelled at me. But my father told me to stay with her and not leave. He said, ‘stay here and pull her the rest of the way back.’ They left and I could hear them arguing. I fell asleep and when I woke up later, I had blood on me, Farrah’s blood. She had this… claw mark on her shoulder. She still has it. It’s never healed. It gets better over the tourist season, but on the off season, it flares up and bleeds. One time we tried to stitch it up, but… After that night, it took a couple days for her to eat and sleep. It took longer for her to start talking again. I know my mother asked her once what happened in the room, and I don’t know if it was too soon after it happened, or what, but she kind of regressed for a couple of days, not eating or sleeping again, staring off into nothing. I don’t think my mother ever asked again.”

Oliver takes a swallow of his drink. “So that’s room 43. Have you ever dealt with anything like it before?”

His tone is slightly hopeful, but cautious and Sam wants to lie to him and tell him that, yes, they’ve dealt with exactly the same situation before and it all turned out fine. But he can’t force the lie past his lips.

“No.”

Oliver nods like he expected the answer and to some extent, Sam thinks if he can read thoughts, then he probably did.

“But that doesn’t mean we can’t do it,” Sam adds.

“Get us the book tomorrow and we’ll see what we find,” says Dean. “We’ve put down a lot of things we’d never heard of before. But it might be best for you and your sister to leave the hotel for a few days while we do it.”

“We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“It won’t let Farrah leave. The last time she did… I ended up with these crutches.”

***

“What do you think it is?”

They’re back in their room, checking weapons and taking inventory of their supplies. Sam’s trying to type out everything that Oliver told them while it’s fresh in his mind. He plans on searching the internet later, pleasantly surprised that while the hotel’s internet is slow, it’s functional.

“Damned if I know,” replies Dean. “It’s a little too ‘Shining’ for me and I swear to god, Sammy if you try coming after me with an axe, or tell me you see two little girls who want to play, I will slap you. But,” he shrugs, “everything can be killed.” He smiles wryly thinking about vampires. “Sometimes you just gotta kill ‘em twice, but eventually, it sticks. I’m curious though to find out what happened in that room.”

“I don’t think we can ask her, Dean. Whatever it was, it sounds like it messed her up bad.”

“Yeah, but she was six. Anything is gonna scare the living crap out of you at that age. It could have been just a spirit messing with her or a poltergeist or revenant.” Dean smirks. “Hell, even a clown.”

“That Rakshasa chose to look like a clown because they are scary as fuck, Dean and I’m not the only one who thinks so,” Sam says defensively. His tone is a little too self-justifying for his own liking, but he can’t help it.

Dean just won’t let the clown thing go. Ever. Two weeks ago Sam woke up in the middle of the night to Dean looming over him with a puffy red ball affixed to his nose. Sam bet it took ten years off his life. He’d rather face a nest of vampires then a clown ever again.

“Clowns are fun. It chose a clown so little kids would trust it, Samantha.”

“And look how well that turned out. I’m just saying if you look back at lore and superstitions and mythology, anything that covers up its face or wears a mask? Creepy as hell and it always ends up killing somebody.”

Satisfied his point is made, he goes back to fiddling with his computer. Dean is still smirking as he takes apart the EMF reader.

“Is it broken?” asks Sam.

“I don’t think so, but when I was at room 43, it didn’t go off at first. And then when it did… it was just weird.” Dean shrugs as he starts checking all the tiny connections. Sam’s still not quite sure how he managed to build the EMF reader out of an old walkman, but there’s no denying it works. After a few minutes in silence, Dean’s satisfied and he puts it back together.

As he turns it on, it starts squealing madly and there’s a knock at the door.

“It’s Farrah, I have your towels,” she calls through the closed door.

Dean looks down at the EMF and then back at the door. Sam’s already there, swinging it open.

“What is that sound?” she asks with a frown.

“That’s the, uh, EMF reader,” Sam hedges.

She nods knowingly. “Oh. Yours sounds different.” At Sam’s look she continues. “We’ve had ghost chasers before. Everyone seems to have one of those. Don’t let it get too close to me or it’ll fry.”

She may as well waved a red flag in front of Dean’s face because he immediately gets up and starts waving it over her, like a security wand at an airport. Sure enough, it starts squealing louder, giving off a shrill shriek of electronic fury.

She eyeballs it as he moves it up and down. “Mostly it’s because I’ve usually got a few deadites hanging around.” Dean gets in closer to her, completely focused on the meter and annoyance crosses over her face. She takes a step back, clutching the towels close to her chest and Dean moves to follow her with the EMF but Sam stops him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Sorry about that,” Sam apologizes.

She’s still eyeing the EMF reader warily as she holds the towels out to Sam and he takes them with a word of thanks. “Um, no worries. Ollie and I are heading to our quarters for the evening. They’re behind the kitchen, through the service entrance in the back. If you need something you can dial extension 9697, it goes to our living room. If you go wandering again, you should try to stay inside. It gets cold up in the mountains at night. Like I said, breakfast is whatever you want to grab in the kitchen. Just help yourselves.”

“Thanks. We appreciate it.”

She bobs her head at Sam’s words. “‘Night.” As soon as she turns and starts walking away, the EMF reader quiets; its lights going lower and lower until she rounds the corner to the staircase and is gone.

Dean tosses the EMF down, stretches across his bed and flicks on the TV. “Anyway, my money’s on poltergeist. Maybe more than one.”

“Yeah,” Sam replies as he sits back down at his computer. “Hopefully Farrah can give us a listing of all ghosts and we can cross check it against the list of people we know died here, but I gotta say, Dean, that’s a short list. I’ve only found 5 deaths at the hotel over the last eighty years and Farrah said there were at least 35 ghosts.”

“Five’s not so bad. We can salt and burn five,” Dean answers, although his back is already grimacing at digging up five graves and then filling the holes back in.

“I don’t think any of them are buried here.”

“Gotta be,” Dean says with a shrug as he starts flipping through the channels.

“What do you think about what Oliver said, about his accident?”

Dean pauses as he recalls the rest of the young man’s story. Oliver told them that as he and Farrah got older, the hotel became increasingly reluctant to let Farrah leave. It started with little things; Farrah would leave for the day, drive down the mountain with one of her parents and breakers would burn out, water mains would burst, doors would open and slam. It only happened over winter. During the tourist season, things seemed fine and Farrah could come and go as she pleased. Then one winter, Farrah went to leave with her mother to go to town and all of the doors to the outside were locked. Of course, it didn’t do much good as Farrah was able to unlock the front door quickly, but the intent was clear. Farrah started to avoid leaving the hotel after winter set in, telling Oliver about a dream she had where everyone in the hotel was a marionette and when she left, they all fell down, their strings cut.

One winter, when they were fifteen, Farrah got sick. Her tonsils were so badly inflamed she couldn’t make a sound except for a horribly squeak. Oliver teased her mercilessly, calling her Minnie Mouse, until her tonsils swelled up so far she was having a hard time breathing.

Her father took her down the mountain to the clinic.

They returned the next morning to find Oliver unconscious at the foot of the main staircase, his right leg broken and badly twisted underneath him.

The words were written on the wall behind him, above the small picture window.

 _You left._

Oliver said he never remembered why he left his bed that night. He had no memory of making his way to the staircase and certainly no memory of falling down it. He remembered going to sleep that night, worried about his sister’s health, and waking up three days later in the hospital being told his pelvis, hip-joint, patella and fibula were broken badly and he’d likely either need a wheelchair or crutches for the rest of his life.

Farrah hasn’t left the hotel since.

“If there’s a ghost or poltergeist fixated on her, I buy it coulda done that to her brother,” says Dean finally. “We’ve seen what pissed off ghosts will do. And I know she claims that ‘her’ ghosts are friendly but I’m not buying what she’s selling. The only good ghost is a dead ghost.” He pauses as he considers his words and realizes they make no sense. “Whatever. I say we salt and burn anything we find and make those bags Missouri taught us and put them all over the hotel. Clean this fucker out.”

The tv goes on the fritz as soon as he finishes his tirade. Static, black screen, static, black screen, static, weird squiggly static, static… He tosses the remote down with disgust. The lights start to flicker and there’s a crash as the water glasses in the bathroom slide off the counter and smash on the floor.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean grumbles. “I got it, pissy little deadites. You’re mad. Well, tough shit. Time to cross over, motherfuckers.”

“Dean.”

“What?” He flicks off the tv and when it won’t turn off he yanks the plug out of the wall. “Any shit you stir up, I’ll leave for your freaky Farrah to clean up,” he shouts.

The lights come back on and when Dean pokes his head in the bathroom the broken glass is already in the garbage can.

“Just, don’t antagonize them,” says Sam.

Dean plugs the tv back in and now it won’t turn on. “They’re antagonizing _me_.”

“Dude, they’re dead. Take the high ground.”

“Fucking high ground doesn’t have tv!”

“Read a book,” Sam says absently, going over his notes.

“A book.”

“Yeah, Dean, they have pages with words written on them and when you read them all together, they make a story.”

“Shut up, I read.”

“Then do it and stop bothering me. There’s a games room in the basement and they had tons of books there. Go grab one and shut up.”

“Well, maybe I will,” Dean says, his tone implying that Sam has dared him to do something horrible that he wouldn’t possibly, _couldn’t_ possibly, consider.

“Fine.”

“Fine,” Dean intones. He pauses for a second at the door before adding, “Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

***

Dean’s trip down to the games room and back is uneventful and he returns with _The Spy Who Came in From the Cold_.

He takes a few quick minutes to salt the door and the windows, pausing to wonder if he’s trapping anything in with them instead of out. Sam sees him hesitate and looks around the room carefully. He thoughtfully shakes his head ‘no.’

Dean’s not sure if he’s glad Sam can tell they’re alone or not.

He settles down to read and becomes so engrossed he doesn’t notice when Sam flicks of his light at midnight and goes to sleep. When the words start swimming on the page in front of him, he’s surprised when he glances over and sees that it’s three in the morning.

He can’t remember the last time he stayed up late _reading_.

He leans over to turn out his lamp and takes one last, quick look to make sure his brother’s asleep.

Sam’s eyelids flicker slightly as his eyes move back and forth in REM sleep, fingers twitching slightly, forehead creased in a frown. Dean pauses. It doesn’t look like a nightmare, doesn’t seem aggressive, but it’s definitely a restless dream.

They deal with this kind of supernatural crap every damn day of their lives and nothing comes for free. Nothing comes without some kind of price or trade in lieu and if Sam’s got some kind of ‘shine’ to him, then Dean wants to know what the price for it is up front.

***

Sam wakes. It’s cold. He slides his feet out of bed and when they sink into snow he doesn't flinch. He knows he is dreaming.

He’s outside the hotel. His footsteps are silent on the ground and the absence of a crunching sound is jarring and disconcerting. It’s sunny out and the light bouncing off the white snow is blinding and he squints, barely able to see out of his eyes but unable to open them wider. He can hardly make out where he’s going but he presses on.

He sees Dean ahead of him. In his leather jacket and gloves. Standing on a dock, a small rowboat in the water.

The only sound is the low _ka-thud-ka-thud-ka-thud_ of his own heart in his ears. Even that rhythmic noise is strangely dulled, as though he’s at a swimming pool with his head under water.

Behind Dean stands Farrah and her brother, Oliver. Farrah’s in a long winter-white wool coat, her satin gloves a brilliant red. As Sam watches she carefully tugs the finger of each one and pulls them off. Long, dark red satin streams out of the sleeves and she tosses one carelessly on the wet dock. Sam has the sudden thought it’ll be ruined.

Oliver has his back to Farrah and she wraps her remaining glove carefully around his eyes and ties it securely, blindfolding him. She spins him three times and steps away and he immediately starts swinging his crutches out in a wide arc, trying to find her.

She bows her head in sorrow.

She steps close to the edge of the dock and stares down at the small row boat.

“I can’t get there from here.”

Her voice is quiet and muted. Flat, as though the sound waves are traveling through thick sludge to make their way to Sam’s ears. Dean shakes his head and then holds his hand out to her.

He’s holding something. A wheel. An old wheel; it looks worn and well used, made of iron with a white band across the top and strange symbols carved along the curve.

She hesitates. Turns to look at Oliver who has stopped wandering and is standing stock still.

She takes the wheel.

Smiles.

Drops the wheel on the dock with a crack.

Sam jerks at the sound. Oliver finally pulls his blindfold off and stares at Farrah, but her back is to him as she turns away and climbs into the small boat. It rocks dangerously as she settles herself. With a graceful flourish, she sweeps her coat behind her, leaves it hanging over the edge of the boat, soaking up water and turning from white to a pale shade of blue.

The boat frees itself from the moor and starts to drift away.

Oliver reaches into his pocket and pulls out a gold coin and tosses it high in the hair. Without looking, Farrah reaches up and plucks it from the sky.

And eats it.

***

Sam wakes and unlike other nightmares he’s had, there’s no cold sweat, or jittering limbs, or harsh gasps of air.

Just a lingering sense of dread.

It curls around his stomach like heavy smoke, settling into all the cracks in his body, finding it’s way into all the places he thought were sealed. He rubs his belly absently at the sick feeling. He looks over at Dean and winces at the loud snoring noises emanating from the back of his brother’s throat.

Honestly, if the hotel wasn’t already haunted, Dean’s snoring would wake the dead.

But it’s apparently not loud enough to wake Dean who’s sleeping open mouthed, arms thrown over his head, like a baby.

It’s kinda nice to see Dean sleep like that. Sam can’t recall the last time he saw it. He regrets having to get out of bed since the slightest sound generally wakes Dean, but it’s past 8 and his bladder will not be denied.

Dean sleeps on and Sam smiles as he hitches his jeans up and tosses a pullover on over his tee and leaves the room quietly.

He’s not only surprised Dean is sleeping so late, he’s surprised he slept so late himself. Despite the fact they’re here for a hunt and the place _is_ haunted, it has a sort of homey feel to it, lived in and comfortable.

He likes it.

He finds his way easily enough to the kitchen, straight down the large, looming staircase and down the hallway. There’s already a pot of coffee brewed and half gone and he cranes his neck around but doesn’t see anyone. He helps himself to coffee and scouts out some frozen waffles and berries in the cooler and settles down to breakfast.

He’s just finishing up when he hears shouting coming from the hallway behind the door that leads to Farrah and Oliver’s room. It sounds like they’re fighting, but over what he can’t tell. He rinses his plate and sets them in the sink and takes his coffee mug down the hallway to explore.

“Stop jumping on my head, Ollie! Honestly!”

“That’s you! I told you, I’m Luigi, you’re Mario.”

“No, I’m Luigi, _you’re_ Mario.”

“No, I’m… oh, what? Oh, fuck. Sorry.”

Their door is open, leading into a small living room area where Farrah and Oliver are crunched together on chair a that’s really too small for two grownups. Farrah’s seated on the chair and Oliver’s bad leg is spread out over her lap and hanging over the side. Sam clears his throat and Oliver, facing him, looks up.

“Good morning,” Oliver says cheerfully, eyes flickering back to the screen. Sam peers in and can finally see the TV screen which is lit up with bright colors as the siblings play Super Mario Bros on their Wii.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt, I heard yelling,” offers Sam.

Farrah snorts and it’s damn near the most ungraceful thing Sam’s heard outside of Dean’s snoring. “Ya, that’s ‘cause Ollie sucks at Nintendo.” Her face screws up comically as her Luigi character falls right off a cliff and dies.

“You were saying?” asks Oliver.

She laughs and carefully, so carefully, lifts his bad leg out of her way and gets up, smoothing out her jeans and baggy sweatshirt as she stands.

“Oh, I, uh, you don’t have to get up,” Sam stammers.

“You any good at this?” she asks jerking her thumb toward the screen.

“Uh, I dunno. It’s been a while.”

“Well, you can keep Ollie company. A storm moved in last night and it’s fucked his leg up bad. Um, if you could help him stay off it, I’d appreciate it.” She’s nervous and hesitant. She clearly doesn’t have much opportunity to ask for help, but she’s not going to turn it down if it’s around.

“Yeah, for sure,” answers Sam and then turns to Oliver. “And if you don’t mind, maybe we could go over some more stuff? For the hotel?” he adds meaningfully, hoping that Oliver will show him their father’s journal.

“Sure,” Oliver concedes.

“Thanks,” says Farrah. “I’ll be back in the basement if you need me.” She waves once and is gone.

Sam and Oliver wait until they hear her make her way down the hallway and into the kitchen. Sam’s about to speak but Oliver holds his hand up for Sam to wait, listening hard for a moment.

“And… now she’s gone,” he says with a firm nod. “Sorry. I’m just… I don’t want her to hear us.”

“No, it’s fine. Um, so you said you had your dad’s journal?”

Oliver nods and makes a motion to get up and then grimaces in pain. He slides back down into the chair. “Would you mind? It’s in my bedroom,” he points to a door to the left. “Bookshelf, third shelf from the bottom, third book from the left.”

“You don’t hide it?” Sam asks as he makes his way to Oliver’s bedroom.

Oliver shakes his head. “Bedrooms are off limits to each other. If we didn’t have a place where the other wasn’t allowed, we’d kill each other over the winter.”

Sam laughs to himself. He’s thought the same thing about himself and Dean, only there’s no space to claim as their own. The Impala, motel room after motel room… hell even at Bobby’s, they share a room. Although, they are able to go out and grab a bite alone, go get drunk alone, go find someone else to ‘not be alone with’, if they want. He can’t imagine what it’s like for Oliver and Farrah, trapped up in hotel, with no way to leave for months on end.

He finds the journal where Oliver indicated, a simple, hardcover book, the kind you can get in any stationary store. He’s hard pressed to not peak and leave it shut as he exits Oliver’s bed room and comes back out to the living room, handing the book to Oliver and taking a seat in one of the other chairs.

Oliver flips through the pages quickly until he finds what he’s looking for and hands it back to Sam.

“I’m not sure where he got it from,” Oliver says as Sam starts reading over the symbols and ingredients for the drink. “I think maybe his father taught him, but he never said for sure, and I never really asked. It was like… it was almost like a taboo in our family. What happened to Farrah in that room, and what they both might have seen or experienced. They didn’t discuss it with each other and certainly not with my mother or me. The only time he brought it up was when he gave me that book.”

Sam traces his fingertips over some of the symbols on the page, somewhat familiar to him, though he can’t quite place them. They are not so much symbols he thinks, as glyphs. The drink is nothing grotesque or horrific, like some of the things the brothers have come across. It’s just a mixing of herbs and spices except for the last ingredient that calls for ‘the weight of an anchor.’ Sam’s fingers run over the words as well and he looks up at Oliver.

“This was you? You were the anchor for your father?”

Oliver nods. “Yes. He took a snippet of my hair and boiled it in with the ingredients. I think I’m the part of it that kept them here. Kept my father from getting lost and would keep Farrah from going in too deep.” He thinks for a moment and his eyes drift away from Sam. “I get the impression that it’s very far. Or… in between is maybe a better way of thinking of it.”

“Do you mind if I take this up to my room?” Sam asks, holding up the book.

“Please, if you think it will help. And I know I keep harping on it, but if you could keep it out of sight. Maybe put it in your bag or in a drawer. Farrah’s all over the hotel doing repairs and maintenance and she’ll be the one dropping off towels and fresh linens since I don’t get around much and I don’t want her to find it.”

“Yeah, of course.” He’s itching to take the book upstairs _right now_ and start reading it, reviewing it, making notes, running searches, but he’s very conscious of the promise he made to Farrah to keep Oliver company for a while. “I’ll take a look at it this afternoon.”

“Mario time?” questions Oliver, waving a Nintendo control at Sam.

Sam laughs and takes the control.

***

Dean wakes and to say that he’s surprised it’s past ten in the morning is an understatement. He couldn’t tell you the last time he slept so long and uninterrupted. The first place he looks, the first place he always looks upon waking, is Sam’s bed.

Empty.

He doesn’t like waking up and not finding Sam.

He dresses and makes his way downstairs, unknowingly following the same route Sam took in the morning. The kitchen is empty but he finds enough dishes in the sink for three people and that strangely calms him.

The coffee is too old and he can tell by the smell that it will taste burnt and smokey from being on the burner too long. He’s had worse, though and coffee in the morning is not so much a choice as a necessity. He eschews food, opting to track Sam down instead.

He finds him after only ten minutes of wandering, pushing through the doors to the service hallway and ambling down to where Farrah and Oliver’s quarters must be. The door has been left open and he can hear high pitched music and the tell-tale sounds of video game playing. He spots Sam and Oliver on the couch engrossed in Nintendo.

“Working hard, princess?” he asks dryly.

Sam’s eyes flick over to him briefly before settling back on the screen. “Harder than you, sleeping beauty. I’ve been up for a couple hours now.”

“And putting them to good use, I see.” Dean leans against the door jamb with his coffee mug.

“Is that this morning’s coffee?” asks Oliver with a shudder when Dean nods. He makes a gagging motion. “I’ll make you a fresh pot.” He pauses the game and pushes to his feet, grabbing for his crutches.

“No, I can do it,” says Sam as Oliver grimaces his way through a few steps.

“It’s fine, I need to get my leg moving or it will stiffen up.”

“Farrah said you were supposed to stay off it,” questions Sam.

“Yes, the joys of having an older sibling, as I’m sure you can attest, is their ever-smothering concern,” Oliver says with wry humor to Sam. Dean can’t help but bristle slightly.

“I thought you guys were twins,” Dean accuses.

“We are,” states Oliver. “But Farrah was a whopping twelve minutes ahead of me and if you ask her that makes her the older sibling.” Oliver turns back to Sam and says in a conspiratorial tone, “I think it gets hardwired in them the second they realize they’re older you.”

“Yeah, probably at the same time that Sammy discovered his bitchface.”

The irony is that as soon as Dean mentions it, Sam makes it; eyebrows and nose scrunching up and forming wrinkles on his smooth skin, lips pursed.

Oliver makes his way slowly back to the kitchen with the brothers following at an awkward pace behind him, unsure if they should pass him and wait for him in the kitchen, or follow at the painfully slow pace.

“Where is your sister?” asks Dean as they enter the kitchen and Oliver starts a new pot of coffee. Dean pours his old cup down the drain. He’ll drink swill if he has to, but there’s no sense in it if better’s on the way.

“Basement. Boiler room. And I’m afraid she guilted Sam into staying with me for a few hours.”

“What? I had fun.”

“But now you want to spend some quality time with the journal. And you should.” Oliver pauses, and stammers slightly. “It’s not the ghosts, you know. It was never the ghosts. They love Fay and she loves them all like cherished friends. It’s that room. Whatever’s in that room, controlling that room, using that room. _That’s_ what caused my accident, that’s what wants to keep Fay here. The ghosts are just… incidental, I guess.”

Sam’s nodding, sympathy at full throttle. Eyes slightly narrowed, irises liquid and warm.

Dean’s still not convinced. “I’m not saying it’s not possible, but in our experience, and it’s extensive, ghosts are never a good thing.”

A wet sponge comes flying from the sink and hits him square in the face landing on the floor with a watery ‘thwock.’

“Is there any place in this joint that _doesn’t_ have ghosts?”

Oliver and Sam are trying not to laugh as Dean snatches up a dishtowel and wipes his face off.

“Very few.”

***

After shoveling down some breakfast, Dean wanders downstairs to find Farrah. Past the games room he was in last night, through the pool hall with it’s freakish echos and chlorinated smell, down the hall to the double doors that Oliver directed him to. There’s another staircase here, taking him deeper into the hotel where the guests don’t go. The air isn’t quite stale, but it is unused and slightly uncirculated, punctuated with the scent of dust and machinery.

This is not the darkened, creaking staircase of a thousand horror flicks. It’s well lit and well-maintained. He can hear music and it’s not creepy piano keys or gothic organs.

It is wretched however. Some kind of pop-dance-techno hybrid that makes him wince.

He finds himself in the sub-basement and the light bright and industrial. He can hear Farrah talking.

“I don’t know,” she’s saying. “But I won’t let anything happen to you guys, you know that.”

There’s a pause and either the girl is seriously messed up or she’s talking to ghosts. Again. He wonders what that does to a person, talking to the dead on a regular basis. Spending more time with them, it seems, than with the living.

“I don’t think they can help.”

Another pause and Dean’s past the point now where he can pretend he wasn’t eavesdropping.

“I know. It’s been getting harder every year. I don’t know if tomorrow’s a good idea.”

Silence from Farrah again as the music drones on in the background. Dean thinks if the ghosts didn’t drive you crazy, the music would.

“ _I know_ and I don’t want to cancel it either, but… what? Oh.” Farrah pokes her head from around the corner of a boiler and her eyes find Dean immediately.

“Did you need something?” she asks.

“Ghost rat me out?”

“Yeah,” she says nonchalantly and her head disappears around the corner again as she goes back to work.

“You spend all day talking to them?”

She comes back around the corner long enough to rifle through her tool box, grab a screwdriver and glare at him.

“What are you working on?”

“Water heater.”

“Need some help?”

She’s back, dropping her screwdriver carefully in her box and shutting it. “Nope. All done.” She looks up at him expectantly. “So, did you need something?” she repeats.

“I wanted to ask you about the ghosts.”

She wipes her hands across the belly of her sweatshirt. “What about them?”

“Uh, maybe we could go someplace and sit down? Have a talk?”

“I told you, the ghosts aren’t a problem.”

“Anytime the dead hang around, it’s a problem.”

“Not for me. They aren’t violent and the tourists love them. They’re actually pretty good for business.”

“How long do you think that will last?”

She brushes by him on her way out of the machinery room and he follows her. “What do you mean, how long will it last? That’s the way it is.”

She’s flicking off lights as she goes, leaving the darkness behind him.

“Look, I’m sure you think you have a handle on this here, but I’ve seen ghosts go bad and they always do.”

“Yeah? And what do you do about it?”

“Salt and burn the bones.”

Her face twists up in disgust or horror, he can’t tell which. “That’s horrible.”

“That’s death. What do you think it’s like for them? Always here but never a part of the world?”

“It isn’t like that. They’re with us. With me. They’re part of the hotel.”

Dean is undaunted. “Separated from things they know, things they wanted in life?”

“They’re fine. They just want some place to be, somewhere to call home.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know, but it’s been working out for some of them for over a hundred years,” snaps Farrah, stopping to turn around and face him. They’re by the pool area and her voices bounces back at them, hollow and sharp. “They had my grandfather and then my father and now they have me.”

“And who will they have after you?” Dean asks. “Are you or your brother gonna have a kid and bring them into this?”

“I don’t know, maybe,” she grouses. But she knows she won’t. She knows she can’t put this burden on someone else. Even if she could, it’s not like she gets many opportunities trapped in the hotel.

“What if they’re not like you?”

“Jesus, why are you doing this? What do you want from me? I don’t know, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? I don’t know.”

“This is what Sam and I do. We help people. We can help you, but you gotta tell me everything you know.”

He’s getting to her, he can tell. A speculative glint in her eye, her lip stuck between her teeth as she thinks.

But then she shivers, and he feels the temperature drop slightly around them. She’s got a point, they are a pretty well-behaved group of ghosts. They haven’t tried to harm him or Sam despite the fact that he’s made it clear they’re there to clean out the house. Dean can tell by Farrah’s body language that the dead are clustering around her. He can see it in the way she shrinks back from him and starts to pull herself closer together, as though she’s crowded. She scrunches her shoulders and tilts her head as though she’s trying not to listen but can’t help it.

He can tell the second that he loses the fight. Her shoulders drop and it’s like she surrenders to them.

“They don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“They can go where the rest of the dead go,” he counters, but he knows she’s not buying it.

“They’re scared.”

“They shouldn’t be here.”

She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I won’t help you get rid of them.” Her eye catches on something and without another word she moves past Dean and peers into the pool.

“What?” he asks at her silence.

“There’s water in the pool,” she says lowly.

The deep end has about three inches of water in it. Not much, hardly any at all when you consider the total volume of the pool, in fact.

“There shouldn’t be water in the pool.” Her arms are crossed over her chest as she stares hard at the liquid.

“Maybe you have a leak or something?” he suggests.

She shakes her head adamantly. “No, I checked. When I shut it down for the season, I checked.”

She looks up and around, her eyes darting everywhere around the hollow, empty space. Dean feels the hair on the back of his neck rise.

“What is it?” he says fiercely.

“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I think…”

“What?”

The ghosts start whispering to her, all at once, closing in, folding in on her, like an inverse wagon circle that seeks protection from the center. She can’t think when they’re this close, when they press against her with cold fingers and frigid energy. She stumbles back a step away from the edge of the pool. “I think it’s trying to come through.”

He can barely hear her voice. “What is?”

She shakes her head and starts to rub her shoulder through her shirt. “I don’t know its name. I don't even know if it has a name.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.” She’s grinding her fingertips into the back of her shoulder as if trying to work out an ache or a knot. She stops and slowly pulls her fingers away from her shoulder.

Her fingertips are bright with blood.

She doesn’t look surprised to see them stained crimson, her lips forming a grim line. As if she was waiting for bad news and she just received it. She closes her fingers in a fist.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

“We should go upstairs. You and your brother shouldn’t come down here again.” She doesn’t look at him as she speaks, her eyes still focused on the small puddle of water in the deep end of the pool.

“We’re gonna have to come down here again if we’re gonna stop it.”

She finally flicks her eyes to him. “I don’t know that you can. But maybe…”

“What?”

She turns from him and now that he’s facing her back, he can see the stain of blood on her shoulder. Her shirt is sticky with it. “You can’t stay down here, come on.”

“Maybe what?” he repeats, starting to trail after her and hating that it feels like she’s a harsh librarian or a mean teacher that just gave him an order.

“I have to check on Oliver.”

***

Oliver’s waiting for her at the top of the stairs, braced heavily on his crutches. Sam’s right behind him.

“Are you okay?” asks Farrah as she bounds up the last few steps.

“Of course I’m okay,” says Oliver and his tone reminds Dean of countless arguments with Sam. “I came here to check on you.”

“I’m fine,” says Farrah dismissively.

“Your shoulder is bleeding again. I can tell,” says Oliver firmly. Her eyes dart over to him quickly and then away again. “Come on then, let’s patch it up.” He starts his painfully slow hobble back to the kitchen and she falls into step beside him.

Dean places a hand on Sam’s shoulder to stop him.

“Hold up. You get anything from him yet?” asks Dean.

“I got his father’s book, but I haven’t had a chance to look it over in detail yet. Why? What happened down there?”

“I don’t know. Nothing really. She was yakking with a ghost and then she saw water in the pool and freaked out. She says she thinks it’s trying to come through.”

Sam frowns. “What is?”

“Fuck if I know. She knows more but she’s not talking.”

“What, and your famous Winchester charm can’t get it out of her?” Sam asks sarcastically.

Dean scowls. “Just see what you can figure out from the book. I’m still trying to get some ghost details out of her but she’s like a mother hen about them.”

“I know it sounds crazy but I think she’s right, I really don’t think they’re the problem here.”

“I don’t care if they’re the fucking Brady Bunch of ghosts. The dead should stay dead. Whatever this other thing is, whatever it wants, I guarantee if we clear out the ghosts, we’re making progress with it. It can’t be a coincidence that this place is like some kind of ghost Club Med and something freaky is trying to bust in.”

“Yeah, as much as I hate saying these words, you’re probably right.”

Dean slaps him lightly on the shoulder “Sammy, I’m _always_ right. Hey, you haven’t had anymore… you know, with the woo-woo?”

Sam’s eyebrows screw together and he stares at Dean. “Is that your sensitive way of asking if I’ve heard anything else?”

“Well… yeah.”

He thinks about his dream last night and while it wasn’t like the other visions he’s had, there was still something definitively strange about it. He’s not quite sure how to qualify and quantify it though and Dean won’t be satisfied with any answer Sam gives until he’s done both.

He shakes his head. “Nope. Nothing.”

“Good.”

***

Farrah finally agrees to sit down with Dean and give him details regarding the ghosts, but not until Dean gave his word that he wouldn’t do anything to them or about them without talking to her first.

He’s lying and she knows it if their stand-off staring contest is any indication.

Sam leaves them in the kitchen and goes back up to the room to start looking over the journal.

It’s a simple journal, nothing fancy. Just a notebook that you could find in any stationary store across the country. On the first page is a name and a year.

 _Francis DeWinton, 1986_

Even though he’s most interested in the pages with the symbols and the details regarding the preparations that he made for going into room 43, Sam’s scholarly brain won’t let him start anywhere else but the beginning. So he starts reading.

A lot of the entries have to do with the hotel and work he performed on various things, a sort of tracking record for maintenance. There are entries about Farrah and Oliver and a woman named Noelle, presumably his wife and the twins’ mother. Sam reads about Farrah and Oliver making snowmen outside, about how Francis will need to go to town to pick up some parts, and a fight he had with his wife about the twins going to school the next year.

Sam feels like a voyeur, reading the details of their lives, but Oliver did give him the journal freely and he reminds himself that there could be more information in the book than just on the pages that Oliver had dog-eared.

He turns the page and finds an entry that catches his eye.

 _Fay and Ollie were playing outside room 43 today and when I reminded them they weren’t to play there and told them to go somewhere else, Fay said she was told to play there. I asked her who told her and she said she couldn’t remember. Whatever’s in that room - I think it likes having her close. I don’t know if it’s because it can watch her better from there or it wants - I don’t know. Later that night when Noelle had taken Fay for her bath, I found Ollie and I asked him to look inside his sister’s head and find out who told her to play there. I’m using one of them against the other and I hate it, but I have to know. He tried for a long time but he said ‘there was too much water.’ I don’t know what that means. He said all he saw was the letter ‘K’ and some kind of fruit. I asked him to explain it to me and I think he saw a pomegranate._

 _It’s not a ghost. I know all the ghosts here and they know us. I’ve spoken with Jonah, who has been here longest of the dead. He told me that this thing, whatever it is, has always been here, it was here when he first arrived, but deep. Very deep. It’s starting to rise to the surface and I think it has to do with Fay. Jonah once told me that to the dead, Fay and I look different. The dead can tell right away that we can talk to them. We’re sharper somehow. He said it was hard to explain unless you’d been on the other side. He said that for as sharp as I look, Fay is even more-so. Whatever it is that enables my family to talk to the dead, Fay has more of it than me and it caught this thing’s attention._

Sam turns the page and is surprised when the entry just ends, the next page accounting a water pipe break and the subsequent repairs. He keeps reading until he comes to the section Oliver indicated before with the glyphs but Francis never mentions room 43 or the mysterious entity again.

He’s researching the combination of herbs, spices and other ingredients that Francis used in the drink he concocted before going into room 43 for Farrah when he hears a small sound.

He looks up.

The young boy stands just inside his room, silent and solemn. His clothes are old, almost formal. They aren’t play clothes. They look like his Sunday best. His dark hair looks like someone was trying to tame it but it just wouldn’t stay put. Sam puts him at six or seven years. At least he was when he died. His eyes are deep, innocent and knowing in the way that only children can manage. He’s staring at Sam, face devoid of expression except for the intensity of his eyes.

“Are you… are you Charlie?”

When the boy smiles, his whole face lights up. Large brown eyes fill with happiness and Sam can see the gap in his smile where two of his bottom teeth are missing.

Sam’s experience with ghosts leans more toward the ‘I’m pissed you’re here and I’m going to try to kill you now’ variety and this is a totally new occurrence for him. Charlie walks toward him easily but despite his harmless appearance, Sam can’t help but lean back, out of his way when Charlie peers over to see what Sam’s reading. His smile fades as he takes in the symbols on the page. He’s probably barely old enough to read but he knows the symbols on the page, Sam’s sure of it.

“You know what this means?” Sam asks.

Charlie’s eyes meet his but the boy shakes his head.

“But… you’ve seen them before, haven’t you?”

Charlie’s unsure, biting his lower lip, not looking at Sam, but tracing his finger lightly on the journal.

“In another one of these? Another book like this?”

Charlie nods.

“In Oliver’s room?” If Oliver has another journal with the same kind of entry, it’s odd he didn’t mention it, but Sam can easily ask him for it.

But Charlie shakes his head.

“No? Maybe in Farrah’s room?”

Another head shake.

“Can you show me where?”

Charlie regards him carefully and Sam can almost see the little wheels turning in his head.

“It’s a bad thing, isn’t it?” Sam says. “The thing that’s in room 43.”

Charlie looks away but he nods as he does.

“My brother and I, we take care of bad things. We’re really good at it.”

Charlie looks back at him again and Sam can tell he’s not convinced.

“You’ve been here a long time, haven’t you, Charlie?”

His little head bobs up and down in agreement.

“I bet Farrah takes good care of you.”

Another small nod.

Sam pauses for a moment thinking. “She keeps the bad thing away?”

Charlie kicks at the ground with his feet, not looking up.

“I’ll take that as a yes. If you show me where the book is, maybe I can help her keep it away.”

Charlie shrugs and Sam isn’t sure what that means.

“My brother and I are really good. We fight monsters and we win. I bet the thing you’re afraid of, it’s like a monster, isn’t it?”

One slow, big nod.

“And Farrah keeps you safe, but what if she didn’t have to? What if the monster was gone?”

Charlie finally looks up from watching his feet and meets Sam’s gaze dead on. This time when he nods, there’s a surety about it, confidence. He turns and walks toward the door, disappearing through the solid wood. When Sam opens the door, Charlie is waiting for him on the other side, grinning widely, like he’s just managed to play a trick on Sam.

“Okay, it’s pretty cool that you can walk through doors,” Sam says and Charlie’s smile gets even bigger. He scampers off down the long hallway and Sam’s left hot-footing it after him.

He’s fast for a little guy.

Then again, the normal laws of physics probably don’t apply when you’re dead.

Charlie leads him to a hidden spiral staircase at the back of the hotel, one that was probably only used by servants or the lower classes back when the hotel was first built. It seems to be abandoned now, full of dust and cobwebs and Sam immediately feels grimy as he walks through and breaks several silvery webs. His footsteps are the only tracks on the dust and he’s careful to keep Charlie’s dark coat in sight. If he looses him, he’s not sure how he’ll find him again. He supposes he’ll have to wait for Charlie to find him.

The stairwell is cramped and built for shorter generations and Sam’s stooped over as he climbs. It’s on an outside wall and there are small windows at regular intervals, letting in the bright light from outside. With the snow on the ground, the sunlight bounces off clean and blue tinged. The dust that Sam is stirring up by climbing the stairs swirls in the beams of light, lazy and slow. He guesses by his quick peeks out the windows that they’re past the third floor already and the door he passes a few steps later should be the fourth.

They climb until they reach the attic.

Unlike most horror films where he’s sure he’d be about to be gutted, Sam has no fear of the attic. He remembers Farrah telling them clearly yesterday that it was safe. Given how particular she was about her instructions he has no doubt she was telling the truth. Charlie disappears through a small, slender door and Sam has to break off some rust on the handle before it turns with an awful shriek and lets him into the attic.

Frankly, it’s your typical garden variety attic. Covered furniture, stacked chairs, dressers, nightstand and the like. It looks like nothing ever got tossed out for being broken at Cross Creek, it just got shipped upstairs. The amount of junk is unreal. Sam has to work hard to keep from knocking over things as he follows Charlie’s zig-zagging lead through the piles. The attic spans the whole of the hotel, mimicking the slight H-shape perfectly, and it’s huge. If someone could be bothered to clean it out, they could set up walls and have a fifth floor to rent out. Although he supposes that they’d have to painstakingly go through everything and decide to recycle or junk.

There are a few dirty windows, but they let the light in well enough and Sam has no trouble seeing most of the expanse in front of him, nor following Charlie.

Finally, Charlie stops in front of what looks like a small tent. As Sam studies the structure, he realizes what it is.

“Is this a fort?”

Charlie nods vigorously, obviously pleased that Sam can tell what it is at first glance.

“Built it yourself?”

Another proud nod as Charlie flings back one of the sheets and creates a makeshift doorway. Charlie has to duck his head a little to get under and he motions that Sam’s to follow. Sam cringes as he folds his body in on itself and scooches into the small space, sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor.

Charlie is beaming as he sweeps an arm around and shows off his stash to Sam. The boy does have a lot of stuff. Books, knick-knacks, utensils, some broken appliances, rocks, coins… pretty much anything that any little boy would look at and think _wow, that is the coolest._ Sam would know. He used to have a similar stash, only his had to be kept in a small pencil box so it could be taken easily with him as they picked up their lives and moved _again_. He spares a quick, sentimental thought for his lonely pencil box, which got left behind mistakenly on a move and was never seen again.

“Are those…?” Sam points toward the set of car keys and Charlie looks sheepish as he hands them back.

“I won’t tell Dean you had them,” Sam swears solemnly and Charlie gives him a look of gratitude.

Charlie shuffles a few things around and then hands him a book.

Sam flips open the first few pages and immediately recognizes the hand-writing as that of Francis DeWinton, and a starting date - 1986. As Sam flips through, he sees none of the familiar words he was used to from the other journal about maintenance, or family life, but instead finds what he was most after.

Detailed accounts of strange occurrences at Cross Creek.

From his quick glance he can see that Francis started this journal after Farrah’s disappearance into the room. It contains stories told to him by his father and his aunt, superstitions passed down through the family. Then his own recollections and musings on the hotel, various guesses and limited research that he had done.

Sam shuts the book quickly and looks up to thank Charlie, but finds himself alone in the little fort. He flips back the makeshift curtain and takes a quick look around the attic, but he’s gone.

He works his way carefully back to the staircase and then his room. Settling down with the new journal, he begins to read.

It seems, while Francis knew of the symbols and the ritual with the drink ever since he was a young boy, he hadn’t put much stock into it and treated it like a cherished family fable. He respected the room as his father had instructed him, never went in and ensured that it was always locked and well marked. During the long summer months, it was a great tidbit to flash in front of the tourists and let their own imaginations wander away with what could possibly be hidden behind the door. During the off-season, he avoided it himself and if perhaps he got a chill or sick feeling when he passed by or stood too close, he never thought much of it. The whole hotel was haunted and he’d spent his life talking to ghosts, as his father did, and his father before him. Room 43 was just another supernatural thing in a life full of the supernatural. He never feared it.

And then Farrah and Oliver were born.

 _I never thought much of it. The hotel is always so strange and in a way, that strangeness is my normality. But on the day Fay and Ollie came home, the dead were agitated, unsettled. They couldn’t explain what it was but they said they felt a shift. They likened it to a window finally opening in a house boarded up for the season and the resulting pressure change pushing through all the rooms. I thought they were simply excited to have such young life in front of them. The dead have always liked the living. Some times too much._

Sam reads how Francis expected Oliver to have the family gift and was quite surprised when he showed no sign at all of being aware of the dead. He thought perhaps it finally skipped a generation. It wasn’t until two months after the twins were born that some of the ghosts told Francis that Farrah would be just like her father and he learned the talent hadn’t skipped a generation but had instead been passed on to a girl. It wasn’t that anyone ever said that wasn’t possible, it’s just the way it had been spoken of, the way it had always been talked about, Francis assumed it was only something that the men in the family could do.

But the ghosts told him different. They said that Farrah looked just like him from the afterlife and they could tell, they could _just tell_ that when they spoke, she would be able to hear.

It was also very shortly after Farrah and Oliver’s birth that Francis started… feeling more about room 43. And the feelings weren’t good.

 _Today I passed by the room and I was immediately chilled and I thought I heard… scratching. Scratching at the door. I paused, thinking I could ask one of the dead to peek in for me but I was alone. When I looked back at the door, I saw the letter ‘F’ inscribed on the wood._

 _I know it’s not for me._

As Sam continues to read, Francis became increasingly worried and fearful of room 43 and began digging into the family library to see what he could learn.

 _Something lives here. Something other than the dead. It’s the reason the dead are drawn here. My knowledge is admittedly limited, but I don’t know of any other place that brings the dead to it. Certainly there are haunted houses wherever you go, but Cross Creek seems to be the only one that has no ties to its dead. I’ve asked the dead what it is about Cross Creek that pulls them in and they find it hard to articulate. The clearest answer I’ve gotten is that it’s like a physical sensation of being pulled, and in their deaths, when physical sensations are lost to them, it’s a most tantalizing thing. Many of them stay for a while and then cross over, as if they thought they could find something here and didn’t. I talk with many of the dead regularly and some of them simply like being here with the traffic of tourists in the summer._

 _But some said they still feel that strange pull and feel like they cannot leave until they find out what it’s from._

Sam turns the page and stops at the long list of symbols, small triangles held together by sticks. He traces his fingers over the tiny inkings. They are familiar to him in the way that most old languages are. At some point or another, he’s sure he’s father made him stare at something with these symbols. At the bottom of the page, Francis has labeled his diagram.

 _Cuneiform list_

There are gaps in some columns and symbols traced or copied badly and then crossed out and redone, as if he was only noting down the glyphs he was interested in. There is one symbol drawn bigger than the others, in darker ink, as though traced over many times.

[   
](http://s989.photobucket.com/albums/af12/zoemathemata/Cross%20Creek/?action=view&current=kur.png)

_I remember as a child, my father had this list posted on the fridge, and he would make me write the symbols again and again. I asked him once where he got it from and why I had to do it. He said he dreamed the list one night in his sleep and every day that I didn’t draw it out he would have bad dreams. I asked what kind of dreams and I’ll never forget what he said:_

 _‘I dream of a thing stretched out before me, vast and horrible. I have no past and no future.’_

 _I wish I never understood what he meant._

Sam leans back in the chair, surprised when he hears his spine crack. He’s stunned to see that almost two hours have passed while he read through the second journal. Brow furrowed he absorbs the words from Francis’ journal, flipping back to the page with the cuneiform symbols. It takes little time to plug it into the internet search engine on his laptop and nod in recognition as he reads his results.

 _Cuneiform script is the earliest known writing system in the world. It emerged in the Sumerian civilization of southern Iraq around the 34th century BC during the middle Uruk period, beginning as a pictographic system of writing. It was the most widespread and historically significant writing system in the Ancient Near East._

He purses his lips. To say his Sumerian knowledge is rusty would be generous.

He stares out the small window, trying to pull out whatever knowledge is lurking in his brain.

And he sees Charlie. Sam leans forward.

Charlie stands at the entrance of the maze, ghostly feet leaving no footprints in the snow. He doesn’t move for a moment until he turns and looks up, catching Sam’s eyes immediately. Sam leans forward in his chair to get a better look and Charlie waves brightly and beckons him.

And then ducks into the maze entrance.

Sam’s eyes trail over the tops of the evergreen bushes that make up the maze. In his head, it becomes a 2 dimensional sheet of paper, and he’s tracing his pencil over the pathways and turns, easily finding his way to the center. He can’t quite make out what’s there, some kind of circular stone bench perhaps and a statue.

He remembers Farrah clearly telling them to stay out of the maze, but in all truthfulness it really doesn’t look that difficult. And though he would never, could never admit it to Dean, he feels bad for the boy, ghost or no. He’s only little and seems a bit lonely. He taps the page of the journal with his finger.

It will keep for an hour or so. He huffs in wry amusement. It’s not like the dead are impatient.

He dons his jacket, leaves the room and quietly pads down the stairs. He can’t hear anything, so he assumes Farrah and Dean are still wrapped up in their ghost discussion. He spares a thought to wonder how it’s going as he navigates the back end of the main floor of the hotel, finally finding the door that leads out to the courtyard and then the maze.

As he steps outside he’s immediately slapped in the face by the sharp, cold air. It’s not unpleasant and frankly, he’s been hunting in colder places. He doesn’t mind the cold. Despite the fact that it’s a stone-bitch to dig up a grave and salt and burn it in the winter, in some ways, it’s better than doing it in vomit inducing heat, especially when you finally crack the casket and you get that awful first gag-worthy sniff. Both the Winchesters have done their duty puking from heat and exertion at a grave.

So, no, the cold doesn’t really bother him. His footsteps crunch in the snow and he has an odd sense of deja vu from his dream the night before, although his steps were soundless then. It’s enough to make him pause in his tracks slightly, lost in thought.

Charlie pokes his head around the corner of the bush and smiles at him as if to say, ‘What is taking so long?’

Sam grins himself and trots into the maze.

The bushes are taller than him and the feeling is surprising. He’s not used to looking up at things and consequently feels dwarfed immediately. The evergreen bushes hold the snow well and between their stiff pines and the white flakes, he can’t see through the wall they create. He drags his hand absently against the greenery as he walks, creating an aerial view of the maze in his mind and following along. He passes by a few openings and turns in favor of the route he’s already mapped out.

He takes a right, another right and then a left and is sheepishly surprised when he comes to a dead end. He lets out a puff of air in a self-depreciating laugh and turns back, following his footsteps in the snow until he backtracks to another opening. He must have miscounted.

When he reaches the second dead end, he frowns. He really was sure that he had the maze figured out before he entered it. He stands still for a moment, reviewing the pathway in his head, recalling each turn he took and placing it accordingly in the picture in his mind.

He’s always been good at spatial relations.

His frown deepens because, yes, he should still be continuing on an open path. He watches his breath plume out in billowy streams. It’s colder in the shade of the maze and even with his hands stuffed deep in his coat pockets, the tips of his fingers are starting to numb. Feeling ridiculous and slightly stupid, he decides to go back.

His stubborn streak is up and he’s already planning on going back up to the room and drawing out the maze for when he re-attempts his quest for the center. He’s a smart guy, how hard can it be?

Ten minutes later, panic starts to pluck her cold fingers against his insides. Lightly, gently, but pluck her fingers she does, nonetheless.

He should have been out by now. He knows he went back the same way he came, he followed his footsteps in the snow for crying out loud. He looks down at the tracks he made earlier as he places his feet next to each one. Heel to toe, heel to toe as he moves against his initial trip. Heel to toe, heel to toe, toe to heel.

No that can’t be right.

He wouldn’t have switched his direction in the middle of an empty path. He couldn’t have. He _didn’t_. The skin of his cheeks start to burn from the cold, and his nose is running profusely. The only sound is his light exhalations of air and his impossibly loud snorts as he tries to keep his sinuses in check.

And a rustle.

The hairs on the back of his neck rise and his stomach tightens in anticipation. The human response of _fight-or-flight_ was long drilled out of him by Dad and Dean, replaced only with _fight_.

But that assumes you have something to fight against.

He turns in a slow circle and feels his guts drop when he sees an evergreen bush three feet behind him.

He knows he’s been walking in a straight line for at least fifteen feet.

Sam’s brain is immediately split in two. The rational side that understands the fundamental laws of physics, the cooly logical side that researches their hunts and plans for all eventualities is telling him calmly and firmly that trees can’t move.

Another rustling sound to his right is like a slap in the face to logic.

The amphibian part of his brain, the part that hunts things that go bump in the night, the animal side that’s kept him alive and relatively unscathed for years, is screaming at his rational side to _shut the fuck up_ so that it can pay better attention and keep them from getting killed.

Or worse.

In the hunting world when things go ugly and go ugly fast, you’d consider yourself damn lucky to end up only dead.

His toes are going numb. Too long standing in the cold and too long ruminating for his toes and fingers. He goes to stamp his feet against the chill and his heart lurches as he feels resistance against them. He slowly looks downward.

A set of roots is wound around his feet.

A fine dusting of snow already sits on top of it.

He didn’t even feel it happen.

His eyes move up and around him again.

It’s too quiet now. Too still. His peaceful afternoon outside with the crisp air on his face has turned into a claustrophobic episode with too-tall greenery looming over him, around him and now starting to crawl up from beneath.

He yanks his feet free, pulling at the young, wet wood. Green spines break off the branches and stick to him. He pretends the sick feeling clawing at his belly is just annoyance as his hands become covered in a thin clear fluid and he tries to shake them clean.

His feet freed, he turns to his left, facing a large wall of green and branches. He’s no shrinking violet. If he can’t follow a path out, he’ll just plow his way through.

***

“… and I think that’s it,” Farrah finishes.

Dean stares at her blankly for a moment before realizing she’s not speaking anymore.

Three hours. Three hours of listening to her list and categorize every damn spook who is currently, or has been at one time, at Cross Creek. She wasn’t exaggerating her numbers before, or if she was, she’s excellent at making stuff up.

He stares down at the notepad he has out in front of him. Normally, he’s one to scoff at note-taking, especially where hunting is concerned. It’s not like being a good note-taker and being a good hunter go hand in hand. But by the time Farrah had gotten to spook #12, he found he was starting to mix up details. He couldn’t remember who came to the hotel when, what they had died of, if they’d ever been guests of the hotel before or had any connection to it, or if they had any reason for not crossing over.

According to Farrah, none of the ghosts at Cross Creek have unfinished business. They just like hanging around.

Dean calls bull-shit. He’s not yet met a ghost that didn’t have a reason for hanging on, their ghostly claws dug into the corporeal world for all they were worth. He feels like he’s getting the rose-colored version of it all from Farrah. That feeling and the sheer boredom involved in listening to her relate the details of over 70 spirits has made him a little belligerent.

Plus he didn’t get lunch and that makes him cranky.

He kind of thought he’d take a break when Sam ambled in for food, but it’s after three in the afternoon and Sammy has yet to show his Sasquatch face.

He probably already made himself a sandwich or scored food elsewhere. Bastard.

“I don’t buy it,” he says tersely.

She rolls her eyes. “I don’t care if you buy it or not, that’s the way it is.”

“You’re telling me out of 70 plus ghosts you don’t have one that causes problems?” Dean’s leaning over the kitchen table, tapping his index finger solidly on the tabletop.

“Not right now I don’t. I told you. They just want to hang out, see the tourists. Rattle some chains and make some spooky sounds. Sometimes we do get one that wants to cause trouble and I pull them aside and let them know that their shit won’t fly here. I find out why they’re causing problems, what they want, and I either get it for them, or I make them leave.”

“How? How do you make them leave?”

“I. Don’t. Know. I told you. I just… I kind of make the threat and then if they don’t take me seriously, it’s like I get mad and then… I kind of push at them.”

“Push at them how?”

“Jesus, are you just gonna keep spitting out the same questions over and over again?” she shoots rhetorically. “I don’t know. I just push at them with my head and then they leave. Sometimes I have to push harder than others.”

“What happens to them when you push them?”

She bits her lower lip. “I don’t really know. It’s like… I know they find it uncomfortable and it hurts. I asked Millie once if I could push at her and have her tell me what it felt like.”

Dean flips through his notes. “Millie…. Millicent Cooper, the one you say is a 1950s starlet?”

“Yes. She said it was like when she was alive and her funny bone would get hit, real bad. She said it hurt, but it was the kind of pain you can’t ignore. And she said it lasted for a long time after I stopped.” Farrah pauses and then calls out. “Sorry about that Mil.” She pauses again and her eyes are clearly directed to someone, something at her right. “I know, but I still feel shitty about it.” She turns back to Dean. “She also says she felt really weak and shaky.” Farrah’s eyes flick back to the empty space. “You never told me that before.” Pause. “Well I do feel bad and I was gonna feel bad anyway, you should’ve told me.” Another pause and then she laughs at something. “Okay, okay.” She turns back to Dean. “That’s all she’s got.”

“So what kind of problems make you threaten a ghost?”

“I dunno. Like if they’re mean to the tourists, or to the other spirits. Or we had one that was pyrokinetic and would set fire to stuff. Or they are really destructive with hotel property. Or sometimes I just get a real bad vibe off them. Like I walk into a room and I know they’re there and it feels… stained. Or tarnished.”

“How do they usually take it?”

“Like kids who’ve been caught doing something naughty and are pretty sure you can’t touch them. They get snarly and mean and flashy, trying to show off their mojo or whatever. Toss some stuff around, try to toss me around.” She huffs. “A ghost hasn’t been able to move me or Oliver without my permission since I was six.”

The same age she was when she went into Room 43.

“And after you push at them?”

“Sometimes they still try to act out and get a rise out of me. Sometimes they just leave right away. Cross over or go haunt somewhere else. I don’t really know. I just know they leave.”

Dean wonders if any of his haunts have ever overlapped with ghosts that have been kicked out of Cross Creek.

“So you think you’re what, Professor Xavier’s school for gifted spooks?”

She bristles at his tone. “You know, I didn’t ask you to come here and I didn’t ask you to help and I think I’ve been really good at answering your questions, but I’m done for today.” She pushes her chair back and gets up, stretching her back and legs with audible pops from her spine and knees.

Dean sigh is rueful and deep. “Look, I… In my line of work, I’ve never met a ghost, sprit or spook that wasn’t seriously fucked up and trying to do harm or just plain bat-shit crazy and causing trouble. This whole… situation you got going on here? It’s a new one on me and I’ve been hunting since I was eight.”

She eyeballs him. “Was it something you wanted to do?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, why not? I’m good at it. My dad did it.”

“It’s pretty much the same for me. My dad did it and he was good at it. It was never something I thought about ‘not’ doing.”

He mulls that over, nodding slowly as he does, and he thinks he gets it. He’s about to say something else when her attention goes from him to something lower down by her waist.

“Calm down,” she says immediately and then crouches down. “Okay, okay.” She looks up at Dean. “Charlie needs to talk to us. I can make him corporeal so you can see and hear him.”

“You can do that?”

She nods like it’s obvious. “Yeah, it’s what I do for the disco every year. It’s their one chance a year to be corporeal again.” She turns back to the empty space that must be Charlie and as she does, Dean can feel the air _shift_. The back of his neck tingles and the fine hair on his arm stands up with a prickly sensation crawling across his skin. As he watches, a little boy with a dark mop of hair flickers into being in front of him. He was kind of expecting soft lights and twinkling glares like the transporter beam of Star Trek, but instead, it’s like crackling static and ozone, sharp flashes and crunches and then Charlie’s in front of them, frantic eyes and worried face.

“I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me. You know I can’t go in there,” Charlie pleads with Farrah, eyes darting worryingly over to Dean and back to Farrah.

“Go where honey?” She reaches out and holds his biceps, like a mom trying to ground a child to her while they continue to freak out.

“The maze. I showed him the book I had ‘cause I saw him reading the other one, and so I figured he’d want the book.”

“What book? Charlie what are you talking about?”

Charlie shifts back and forth on his feet and Dean can tell he’s realizing he just confessed to something he didn’t mean to.

“Your dad. He gave me a book to hide and I hid it real good but he said that someday I’d hafta give it someone and I thought it was him, the really tall one.”

“Sam?” asks Dean. “You mean my brother Sam?”

Charlie flicks his gaze to him again. “Yeah and he really liked it but then there was another me and I wanted to tell him, tell Sam it wasn’t me but it held me back and I couldn't do it and I wanted to come here right away but it wouldn’t let me.”

“Charlie, is it the bad thing? Was the bad thing holding you back?”

Charlie’s head nods so hard it would be comical if it wasn’t for the sick look on his face. “I tried to get here to tell you.”

“About the book?” asks Farrah.

“No, about the tall one, Sam.”

“What about Sam?” Dean demands.

“It made him. It made him go into the maze.”

***

“Charlie says Sam is in the maze.”

Dean had followed Farrah as she made a beeline back to her and Oliver’s small apartment room. Farrah’s tone is flat, succinct as she grabs her coat from the closet and zips it up.

“What the hell is he doing in there?” Oliver is pushing himself up from the couch, bracing his wobbly balance on his crutches.

Farrah’s on her hands and knees in the closet, tossing shoes around until she finds her boots and unceremoniously jams her feet into them, not bothering with the laces.

“It lured him in, Ollie,” she says as she stands up.

It’s silent in the room all of a sudden and Dean’s looking back and forth between the two of them waiting for one of them to speak when he realizes they _are_ speaking.

They just aren’t doing it out loud.

“How ‘bout you stuff the psychic crap and share with the slow kids in the class?’ Dean shoots angrily.

“I was asking Ollie if he could tell where in the maze Sam was,” Farrah says unapologetically.

“And?” Dean prompts.

“I can’t,” answers Ollie. “The maze is one of my dead zones. It’s very difficult for me to get anything from there.”

“Did Sam ever give you anything of his?” Farrah asks her brother. “I mentioned it to him yesterday.”

Ollie shakes his head. “No, but…” he turns to look at Dean.

“But what?” Dean grinds out sharply.

“You think he’d work?” questions Farrah.

“Jesus fucking Christ if the two of you don’t knock it off with your cryptic bullshit, I will shoot one of you.”

“I was thinking,” says Oliver, “that siblings ‘belong’ to each other, in a manner of speaking.”

“So?”

“So, I might be able to use you as a locator for Sam?”

“I don’t get it, don’t you know this maze? Let’s just go in there and get him.”

Farrah shakes her head. “In the summer, of course I could do that. I know the maze and rescue the tourists all the time when they get lost, but you know, winter is different here and the maze is one of the places that’s most different. It’s not just a maze. It’s like a playground for this thing. It _moves_ things; trees, statues, anything in the maze. It rearranges them. It changes the pattern. It could even start moving him, although it would probably have a hard time taking him too far. I can go in there and get Sam but it could take me hours or even days to find him without an idea of where to start looking.”

“And you think that you can use me to find him?”

Farrah and Oliver both nod.

“Then use away. What are you waiting for?”

Oliver hobbles forward on his crutches, his leg clearly bothering him more. He hesitates for a moment and then reaches out and grabs Dean’s arm. The room is silent as Oliver and Dean stare at each other.

“I thought you said I was null,” Dean comments.

“You are,” Oliver says, his tone distracted. “But I’m not trying to read you, I’m trying to get to your brother through you, the same way I would use his keys or a ring.”

“Are you objectifying me?” he says, feeling uncomfortable under Oliver’s scrutiny.

A faint smile plays across Oliver’s lips. “Yes.”

It’s quiet again and Dean tries not to fidget or shout at Oliver to hurry the hell up. Behind him he can hear Farrah pulling things out of the closet and then it’s silent. Finally Oliver speaks.

“South-southeast corner, about twenty feet from the center.” He drops his hand from Dean.

“All right,” says Farrah. “Sit tight.”

“Whoa, whoa,” says Dean quickly. “I’m going with you.”

“What did I tell you and Sam? _Stay out of the maze._ It’s not safe for you.”

“But it is for you?”

“It’s safer for me, yes.”

“What are you gonna do when you find Sam if he’s hurt, or unconscious?”

She squares her shoulders. “I’m a big girl.”

Dean huffs incredulously. “And he’s a bigger guy. You’ve got no chance if he can’t move on his own.”

“He’s right, Fay.”

She spins to face her brother. “Ollie!”

“I’m sorry but he is. If Sam’s hurt and can’t move on his own, it would take you forever to get him out and when Dean decides to follow you after you leave, I won’t be able to stop him,” Oliver says plainly. “He’ll just outrun me on my crutches.”

She stares at the two of them like they are mutineers on her ship. “Fine.” She turns back to the closet and pulls out another coat. “Take one of Ollie’s, yours is worth shit out there. Honestly.”

She doesn’t wait for Dean as she leaves the room and starts down the hallway to the back of the hotel. She opens the back door and they get hit with a cold wind and flakes of snow.

“Storm’s moved in,” says Ollie lowly.

“Yeah. You should probably dig out some blankets and put a pot of coffee on. When we bring Sam back, he’ll likely be cold and I’ll be pissed.”

“Ice princess,” Ollie jokes lowly. She smiles at him and leans forward to give him a hug. “Be careful, Fifi.”

“I hate when you call me Fifi.”

“No you don’t.” He pauses. “Fifi.”

She pulls away and is already down the small steps and heading toward the maze with Dean trailing behind her. His eyes roam over the hedge of greenery that’s the outer limit of the maze. The covering of snow on it is getting denser as the flakes fall quietly from the sky. It’s cold out. He can already feel the start of the chill through Oliver’s down coat and he wonders how long Sam’s been outside.

She halts just in front of the maze and turns to Dean. “Gimme your hand.”

He stares back at her. She rolls her eyes.

“It’s like… if I’m touching you, then you can see the maze how I see it, and you won’t get distracted or lost.”

“I can keep up with you.”

“It’s not that, it’s… it can make you see things and you might think you’re following me but you aren’t. But if were holding hands,” she makes a face at the expression, “then no matter what, you’re with me.”

“Should I go get my gun?”

“It won’t help you. There’s nothing to shoot at.”

He eyes her warily before finally slapping his hand into hers. Her fingers are cold and rough; calloused from all the work she does around the hotel. Then he looks at the maze.

It’s different now. Sharper. Taller. Darker. Denser. If it looked like this normally, no one would approach it with a ten foot pole. The bushes and trees are no longer green but dark, dark brown with black streaks feeding through as branches and roots. He has the feeling that if he reached out and touched the brown, it would cut him.

Farrah is tugging at his arm, pulling him into the maze and as they cross over the threshold a wave of nausea strikes him, making his stomach roll briefly. He feels like the air has changed, become thicker and they are pushing through it. Once inside the maze, he’s stunned to see there’s no sky above them.

Just black.

Nothing but black.

It makes his stomach roll again to look into the nothingness and he’s struck by a wave of vertigo. There’s no reference point and he stumbles to his knees. Farrah’s pulling at his arm.

“Don’t look up again,” she says tersely and as he climbs back to his feet he notices that she keeps her head tipped downward, able to see the brown and black, but not the nothingness above.

“Is this how it always looks?”

“Only in winter. We should try not to talk.”

She pushes forward, taking a turn. She stops as a branch reaches out from the side and tries to brush over her face. She mutters something under her breath that Dean doesn’t catch and the branch slinks back into mass.

The walls are writhing as they pass by. Like they are excited or tickled.

Or hungry.

He feels them, reaching out and grabbing at his feet but they keep moving. The reach a dead end and she turns back to face him, her lips a grim line.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing, we just have to back track.” She pulls him after her.

He thinks he hears laughing.

A sudden thought occurs to him. “Why don’t you just burn this thing down?”

He’s grabbed sharply and pulled into the writhing mass before he can even yelp out his surprise. He can hear Farrah shouting something, feel her cold fingers and sharp nails dig into his skin. It’s black and foul, the smell of dead rotting things filling up his nostrils and clawing it’s way down his throat. The stench is being chased by a branch and he tears at it with his free hand, getting a slippery grip on it as the tip of the branch starts to worm its way into his nasal cavity. He opens his mouth to shout and another branch, thick with slimy, soft leaves pushes into his mouth and starts to wiggle its way toward the back of his throat. He tries to yank his hand other free from Farrah’s but she holds fast and he feels her other hand fist into his coat and with a mighty yank she pulls him free, sending him sprawling to the ground, spitting and choking, long trails of saliva and brown sludge falling from his lips.

He realizes he’s pulled her down with him, her hand trapped painfully under his, pushed into the snow, as he rests his weight. But she’s silent as she waits for him to catch his breath. He sits back on his haunches, releasing her hand from his weight. He looks up at her.

“You shouldn’t say such things while we’re in here.”

“No shit.” He gets to his feet and she’s careful to keep her strong grip on his hand as he does. “Is this what’s happening to Sam right now?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. But Ollie didn’t say he was dead, so he’s not.”

He hesitates and he doesn’t want to ask but before he can stop himself the words are out of his mouth. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Ollie’s never wrong.”

He can hear the same confidence in her voice as she talks about his brother as he hears in his own when he talks about Sam.

She tugs on him lightly. “We need to keep moving.”

They continue on in silence again. She doesn’t speak and he keeps his mouth shut. The only sound is the sick slither of the branches as they turn in on each other, rolling over their own surfaces with a slick, oily sound, and the crunch of his feet and Farrah’s on the ground.

They come to six more dead ends, each one making Farrah’s expression more and more grim. He looks down at their hands once and their finger-beds are going from sick-white to a pale, pale blue. It’s colder inside the maze than it was outside. There’s no wind, but it’s like the maze is pulling the warmth from them. He realizes though that although it’s cold, his breath doesn’t plume in out in grey puffs.

It gets sucked into the air and there’s nothing.

He’s so focused on the ground under his feet that when Farrah is suddenly in front of him he almost runs into her back. He looks over her shoulder and sees her staring at a large mass on the ground about ten feet in front of them.

It’s a writhing lump of branches, leaves, moss and dead things. Dean’s seem some scary ass shit in his life but something about the pulsing pile makes him a little ill.

“What the fuck is that?” he whispers in her ear.

“Sam.”

“The hell?” He darts past her and her grip is surprisingly strong as she holds him. He turns back quickly and makes a move to yank his hand free. Strong or not, she’s still a woman and her strength is no match for his.

Then he sees her face.

It occurs to him in a split second that the maze is some kind of otherworld, and whatever it is that makes Farrah different, that enables her to speak with the dead also makes her something ‘other’ as well. He’d been following her the whole time they were in the maze and hasn’t seen her face for a while, either staring at the ground or at her back and now when he looks at her, she has an otherness about her. Her skin is sharply ashen, but she doesn’t look ill with the change in color. Her eyes which were dark grey before now have silver flecks in them. She looks cold; remote and far away.

He’s suddenly seriously concerned that he’s royally fucked.

She’s not looking at him but is staring at the large mass. She moves toward it and he has no choice but to follow her. When they get closer, Dean can make out Sam’s shoe, hidden deep within the mess and he struggles with the urge to pounce on top of the entire pile and start pulling and hacking and shouting for his brother. Farrah crouches down, kneeling in the snow and puts one hand on top and the branches immediately cover her hand, smoothly gliding over top, happy for more.

“What are you doing?” Dean rasps, watching as Farrah calmly lets the branches start working their way up her arm.

“Wait.”

He tugs at her hand, like a toddler trying to get his mother’s attention. “Seriously, have you like checked out or something?”

“Just… wait.”

She waits until the branches are curling their way up to her shoulder, one snaking around the faux fur collar of her puffy down jacket and wrapping itself around her neck. She turns her hand over in the large mass of branches and closes her fist tightly over as much as she can hold. And then she starts to speak. Her voice is low and soft and he has to strain to hear her words. At first he’s not sure he’s hearing her correctly, but as she repeats herself over and over, he can make out all the words.

“There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile, he found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile. He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse, and they all lived together in a little crooked house. There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile…”

They are so seriously fucked, Dean’s not even sure he has words for it.

“All right, fuck this,” he says and he yanks at his hand.

And can’t free it from hers.

“He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse, and they all lived together in a crooked little house. There was a crooked man…”

She’s slowly rocking back and forth and her eyes have glassed over, no longer seeing. She’s reached some kind of fugue state and he’s stuck watching her repeat some ridiculous children’s rhyme. Her voice is getting quieter and quieter until all he can hear is the soft sound of her k’s and t’s, and the low hiss of her s’s.

Then the shrieking starts.

He can’t tell where it’s coming from at first until he realizes it’s the mass covering Sam. It’s shrieking and squawking and turning over itself faster and faster. It tries to unwind itself from Farrah, spinning it’s way back down her arm, but it’s trapped in the vice-like claw of her grip. It tightens around her wrist and Dean can see it digging into the skin, pulling off layers of tissue. Blood starts to drip off her wrist and from her palm.

The mass starts to hiss, snapping out long angry branches at her face. One of them cuts the top of her cheek and she twists her wrist cruelly and Dean hears it mewl. Her expression is stoney, almost condescending as she repeats her rhyme. The turgid mass starts to hiss.

“Go away.”

He’s surprised when she says it. Her voice is clear and precise.

He’s even more surprised when the aggregation whimpers and starts to slink backward, coalescing itself back into the walls. It pulls itself off Sam quickly, leaving him wet and sludgy on the floor of the maze. Farrah keeps her grip on the branches in her hand until Sam is free and then she _squeezes_ them, the liquid falling from her hand black and bloody onto the snow. There’s another high pitched whimper and then she tosses her handful to the ground.

Dean crouches next to Sam and uses his free hand to shake his shoulder gently. “Sam? Sammy? You still with us?”

Sam groggily moves his head and opens his eyes slowly. “Dean.” His lips are slightly blue, his clothes wet and dirty.

Farrah slides her bloody hand into one of Sam’s. “Can you stand up?”

Sam looks over at her and shrinks back slightly toward Dean. Farrah frowns in confusion, looking quickly at Dean.

 _She doesn’t know she looks different in here_ , Dean thinks.

“It’s okay, Sam,” he says lowly, trying to get Sam into a seated position. Between the two of them, they manage to get him to his feet, sandwiching him between the two of them. Farrah’s able to keep a hand on Dean’s, while she holds one of Sam’s over her shoulder.

“I got lost,” Sam mutters.

“We know,” answers Dean.

“Crazy lost and the walls were watching me.” His words are slurred and his feet sluggish as they half drag him along.

Neither one of them have anything to say to that and Farrah and Dean continue on in silence as Sam continues to babble and murmur.

Dean doesn’t know how long it takes them to make their way out. Less time than it took to make their way in by a long shot, as if the maze is tired of fucking with them.

As if Farrah tired it out.

They finally come to the break in the wall that signifies the entrance and Dean finally chances a look up as they cross the threshold and can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief when he sees grey sky and shapeless storm clouds. He looks up at the hotel and sees Oliver standing in the doorway, posture tense. He’s got a soft, warm glow about him. Dean blinks his eyes, thinking he’s got snowflakes in them before he realizes that Farrah’s still touching his hand and it must still be part of how she sees things.

He looks past Oliver at the hotel and it too has a kind of glow, but not like Oliver. Where Oliver’s glow or aura is soft and shaded, warm and somewhat comforting, the hotel is almost swampy; thick and gooey.

But it isn’t threatening or foreboding like the maze. Dean doesn’t feel sick looking at it.

Just sad.

He can tell the second Farrah slips her hand away from his. It’s like a cellophane wrapper has been ripped off his view and everything goes back to normal.

The journey back must have warmed Sam up some and while it’s difficult to get him up the small stairs and down the long hallway to Farrah and Oliver’s apartments, they manage it and drop him on Oliver’s bed. Dean starts to strip Sam of his wet jacket and shirts as Farrah unties his boots and yanks them off his feet along with his socks.

The bed is warm, already heated up by an electric blanket and Sam shivers slightly and burrows under the covers as Dean tucks him in. Dean shifts his eyes over to Farrah quickly and then back to Sam.

“You should get your hand taken care of,” says Dean. “Your face too.”

He sees her out of the corner of her eye look down at her hand, cut and clotting, and the burn on her wrist where the branches sloughed off a few layers of skin.

“Yeah,” she says quietly, her tone laced with soft confusion, like she can’t quite remember how she got hurt. “I’ll get Ollie to bandage it up. You okay?”

“Me? Peachy.”

She nods and starts to back out of the room. “I’ll bring back some coffee and maybe some soup for Sam. I think he’ll be fine. He just needs to warm up.”

The second she’s gone, Dean leans over Sam and shakes him gently.

“Sammy? You okay?”

Sam blinks slightly, let’s loose a shiver down the length of his body. “I got lost, Dean.”

“I know.”

“Stupid pomegranates. Don’t eat the pomegranates.”

Dean nods like it’s sage advice, although he hasn’t a clue what his brother is mumbling about.

“I won’t.”

“I didn’t eat them, she will. She eats them on purpose.”

“Okay,” Dean soothes as he pulls the blankets up and around Sam.

“No.” Sam’s hand darts out of the blankets and catches Dean by the wrists. “It’s not okay, Dean. Don’t give her the wheel. _Don’t_.”

Dean has no idea what Sam’s saying but he’s got a sick feeling that it’s not just random hypothermia confusion.

“I won’t, okay? I won’t.”

Sam half nods and his eyes drift shut again. He sighs dreamily as the warmth starts to seep back into his body. Dean sits on the edge of the bed and tugs the borrowed jacket off.

He feels Oliver’s eyes on him before Oliver clears his throat in the doorway.

“Sorry for kicking you out of your bed, man,” Dean says gruffly.

“Don’t mention it.” Oliver hesitates, his mouth opening and closing quickly.

“What?”

“You should come see something.”

Dean spares a look at his sleeping brother, but the solemn, serious expression on Oliver’s face has him getting up and following Oliver out of the apartment and down the hall, retracing their steps to the back door.

“I didn’t want to go through the kitchen ‘cause Fay’s in there getting coffee and some soup for Sam,” says Oliver as he hobbles past the back door and down another hallway. They come out of a hidden door underneath the grand staircase and Oliver limps toward the foot of the stairs. When he gets there he pauses.

“I haven’t told Fay yet. But it’s not like I can hide it from her.” Oliver looks uncomfortable. “I’m really sorry, Dean. I should have never let you and your brother stay.”

Dean frowns as Oliver indicates with a jerk of his head for Dean to look up the stairs.

It’s scrawled across the wall at the landing in the same brown sludge that was so prevalent in the maze; one word above the small window that looks out to the maze, two words below.

 _Welcome, Sam Winchester_.

***

By the time Sam is warm and awake, Dean has their bags packed and loaded in the Impala and he won’t hear a word of argument from Sam. They’re at the front door, Dean ready to take his leave and Sam’s being stubborn and won’t go.

“Dean, we don’t leave hunts in the middle. And we’ve dealt with this kind of stuff before.”

“Get in the car, Sam.”

“Dean -”

“Sam. Car.”

It doesn’t help Sam’s cause that both Farrah and Oliver are standing right behind Dean, Farrah with her arms crossed, fatigue written all over her face and Oliver resigned and just looking wrung out. Farrah’s fingers drift up to her temple and she presses them in hard, pain etching her face.

“You need to go Sam. It wants you to stay and if ever there was a reason to leave, that’s it,” she says tiredly.

“We can help. That little ghost, Charlie, he gave me a book and I think I can figure it out.”

“Do you remember what happened to you in the maze, Sam?” Farrah asks.

He doesn’t. She knows he doesn’t. By the time he woke up, he had no recollection past his first step into the maze. He doesn’t remember any of his ramblings to Dean, nor anything that occurred while he was lost inside. He purses his lips.

“No. But I -”

“Look at those words, Sam,” says Dean fiercely, pointing to the staircase behind Farrah and Oliver. The brown words are still stretched across the wall. “We can come back in the spring when it’s settled down.” Dean turns back to Farrah and she’s nodding.

“If you still want to. We’ll put you up.” She starts to sway slightly on her feet and Oliver shifts one of his crutches over to free up one of his hands to rub her neck. The episode in the maze exhausted her. “But you should go. Now.”

Sam sighs in stubbornness, eyeballing each of them before grinding his teeth. “Fine. But we’re coming back. We’ll get this figured out.”

“We’ll be here,” says Oliver and then his lips curl wryly. “Of course we’ll be here.”

Dean nods once firmly. “I’m… I thought we could help. I wish I’d been right.”

“Us too,” answers Oliver for both of them.

There’s nothing left to say after that and Sam and Dean exit the hotel without another word. As soon as the door shuts behind them Sam opens his mouth.

“Dean, I -”

“In the car, Sam.”

“You’re not even going to fucking listen to me, are you?”

“Nope.”

Sam gets in the car and slams the door shut hard, making Dean literally bite his tongue to keep his mouth shut. He slides into the driver’s seat easily, turning the key in the ignition.

And nothing happens.

He rotates it back and turns it again. The engine doesn’t turn over, doesn’t make so much as a ‘click.’

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dean mutters as he pops the hood and gets back out. The sun is already below the mountaintops and the light is dim, but he’s just barely got enough to take a look at the engine. He checks the usual suspects: spark-plugs, distributor, battery, alternator. Everything’s fine.

He gets back in the car and turns the ignition again.

Still nothing.

“Son of a bitch,” Dean curses as he hits the steering wheel with the heel of his palm.

“Looks like we’re staying.”

Dean shoots him the dirtiest, pissiest look he owns as they both get back out of the car, grab their bags and climb back up the steps to knock on the door.

Farrah opens it and she doesn’t look surprised to see them.

“It won’t let you leave, will it?”

She doesn’t need an answer and pushes the door open wider for them to come back inside.

***

Dinner is a somber affair. They eat leftovers from the night before in silence; Sam, Dean and Oliver seated at the table, Farrah once again eating standing up.

“Why do you do that? Why don’t you sit down?” Dean finally asks.

“When I eat, they crowd around. They miss food. If I’m sitting it’s very… claustrophobic.”

“Fucking creepy.”

She shrugs. After a few minutes she sets her plate down and clears her throat. “It’s very important to Charlie, Sam, that you know he wasn’t the one that led you into the maze.

“Oh, I, uh… okay.” Sam’s not quite sure how to answer that.

“How do you know for sure?” counters Dean. Being trapped in the hotel has turned his mood sour and he’s more than willing to spread the feeling around.

“Because the maze is unsafe for the dead, I blocked it off from them a long time ago. There’s an iron pipe buried underneath the entrance. They can’t cross it. If Sam saw something go through the front, it couldn’t have been one of them.”

Dean grudgingly has to accept her word for it.

“I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well tonight. Do you guys need anything before I turn in?”

“I can take care of them, Fay,” says Oliver. “If they need something I can tell them where to find it.”

“Okay. Goodnight.” She doesn’t wait for a response before she leaves the kitchen, rubbing her eyes as she goes. Oliver watches her with worried eyes, his gaze not leaving her until she disappears down the hall.

“So, do you guys need anything?” asks Oliver.

“Other than a way down the mountain?” Dean says and at Oliver’s somewhat sheepish look, he shakes his head. “Naw. We’re cool.”

“I really am sorry I ever agreed to let you stay,” Oliver says, repeating his sentiment from earlier.

Sam waves his fork around in a gesture of dismissal. “Don’t be. We came here to help. We can still help.”

“I guess I’m just… I’m not convinced anymore that there is any help to be had,” replies Oliver, his tone melancholic and low. “If you change your mind about needing something, call. I’ll answer the phone and let Farrah rest. Don’t bother cleaning up, I’ll take care of it in the morning.” He pushes himself to his feet, getting his crutches underneath him and with a nod of his head, he shuffles off.

Once he’s gone, Dean jerks his head in Sam’s direction. “Seriously, you okay?”

“Yeah. I feel fine.”

“Uh-huh. ‘cause you didn’t look fine when we found you.”

“Dude, I’m not lying to you. I don’t remember anything that happened but I feel okay.”

They eat in silence, shoveling food into their mouths. Leftovers are a rare thing for them and the stew is surprisingly comforting. Oliver had some frozen rolls that he toasted up to go with the small meal and Dean’s tearing into one of them when Sam speaks again.

“So, uh, you gonna fill me in on what happened?”

“We went into the maze, we found you, we left.” Dean shrugs. “End of story.”

“Dean, we can’t figure this out if you won’t tell me what happened.”

Dean takes his time using his roll to sop up the stew gravy on his plate, chewing slower than Sam has ever seen him eat in his life. Sam raises his eyebrows, not buying the act.

“It was fucking weird, okay? And I gotta tell you, Sammy, I don’t know about Farrah.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know if she’s entirely human.”

“What? That’s… what about her brother?”

Dean shrugs. “Him… I get nothing too freaky off of. But her, out in that maze… She didn’t look right. Hell, the whole thing was like some bizarre Twilight Zone but she was especially creeptastic. She looked… off. Different. When we found you, you were covered in branches and roots, that same brown sludge on the wall out there. You don’t remember any of that?”

Sam shakes his head slowly. “I get a feeling like… like I was covered, but that’s it.”

Dean nods chewing his food. “And then Farrah, she grabs a bunch of it and starts spitting out this freaky-ass kid’s rhyme about a crooked man and a crooked house and that’s all she fucking says. Just keeps repeating it over and over again. And then she tells the crap covering you to leave and it fucking howls. But it left. So you tell me what she is that she can do that.”

Sam blows a breath of air out of pursed lips. “You think witch?”

“I dunno man.” He shoves another forkful into his mouth and chews for a second. “That kid ghost, Charlie, he said he gave you a book.”

Sam’s eyes light up. “Yeah, it’s another one of their dad’s journals only this one seems totally dedicated to what’s going on here. I think he might have already figured a lot of this out.”

“If that’s true, then why didn’t he do fuck all about it? Or tell his kids what was going on?”

“Got me.”

“Well, whatever it is, don’t go wandering off by yourself again.”

“Dean, c’mon…”

“I mean it, Sam. This place has got its creepy eye of Sauron on you and I don’t like it.”

“Eye of Sauron?”

“What? I read.”

“Geeky books apparently,” Sam says with a smile. “I’ll be careful.”

“Good. ‘Cause I’m tired of saving your princess ass.”

***

Dean’s surfing the net, trying to find out all he can about Cunieform script when Sam’s says he’s found something in Francis’ journal.

“I think I know what that was, in the maze,” Sam says, sitting up in bed and propping himself up against the headboard.

“Which part?”

“You said she was saying a rhyme? While she freed me from the branches?”

Dean nods. “Yeah, something about a crooked man and a crooked house.”

“Dude, this is some crazy shit, but it sounds like her dad made that into a kind of trigger for her.”

Dean finally looks up from the laptop. “What do you mean?”

Sam flips back through some of the pages and then forward again. “Well, I’ve been reading about everything that happened post Room 43, and her dad got more and more freaked out that she would get lured in there again, but at the same time, he started noticing that she could do these things that he couldn’t. Like how you told me earlier about her pushing at the ghosts.”

Dean nods and motions for Sam to continue.

“Her dad could do that too, but he says point blank he’s not nearly as strong as she is. And this is when she’s…” Sam flips through some pages. “Seven. I guess it’s not something he learned until he was in his twenties. His dad was the same before that. And then, according to this, she started _pulling_ ghosts in.”

“What, like bringing them to her?”

Sam bobs his head enthusiastically. “That’s what her dad thought. Over one hundred and sixty ghosts showed up during the winter of 1987 and stirred some serious shit up. Sounds like that was the season that started giving this place its ‘no one visits during the winter’ vibe. Up until then they used to get regular deliveries of supplies, or visitors, or even some off season tourists, but that year two of the delivery men, on separate deliveries, left Cross Creek and committed suicide.”

“How?”

“One by gunshot, one by pills. And there was a family from town that came up to visit, their kids were around the same age as Farrah and Oliver and two weeks later the son had to be committed after he tried to slash up his sister. Said she had ‘the dead all over her’. Total psychotic break. So Francis started freaking out. I mean he’s got this kid on his hands who’s stronger than he is, and now she’s bringing ghosts in. It took him most of the spring and summer to clear out the excess hauntings and then he started looking into hypnotherapy for Farrah and I think that’s what he did to her.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Look he says here, _I’ve got it under control now. She’s got it under control now. It’s a simple rhyme, one she can easily remember. She doesn’t know why, she doesn’t need to know why. I can’t help but think she has these gifts for a reason, and I don’t want to take them away from her, but we can’t have another season like the last._ I think he figured out some kind of way to bury the bulk of her… power, I guess, in her subconscious, but the rhyme releases it. Like a post-hypnotic suggestion she can give to herself.”

“Well that’s just fucking great. And what happens when she decides to open Pandora’s freaktastic box all the way?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m starting to think we should have brought more guns.”

“I don’t think more guns is going to be the way out of this.”

“More guns is the way out of anything,” Dean argues back with raised eyebrows. He rubs his hand over his stubble. “So what the fuck _is_ she.”

“Does she have to _be_ something just because she’s got abilities?” Sam asks.

“Fuck yeah, she does.”

Sam’s quiet for a moment. “Is that what you think about me?”

Dean’s eyebrows come together. “What?” He’s honestly confused.

“Is that what you think about me?” Sam repeats, his voice a little louder this time.

“No.” Dean’s tone implies he thinks Sam’s an idiot.

“Isn’t it?”

“Sam…”

“I’m serious, Dean. If you think that about her, then you gotta think that about me too.”

“I don’t.”

Sam eyes him for a moment. “Maybe you should.”

“What? C’mon, don’t start this, man. It’s late, it’s been a shit day…”

“I’m just saying -” Sam huffs out a breath. “You can’t think that about Farrah and not about me. If she’s not human because of what she can do, than neither am I.”

“Of course you’re fucking human, Jesus. I think I would know by now if you weren’t.”

“Would you? ‘cause I gotta say, after today, and that message…”

“You’re not telling me some spook message has got you… spooked,” he finishes lamely.

“It picked me.”

“There’s only two of us! Fifty-fifty chance.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Yeah, Dean. Right.”

It’s Dean’s turn to sigh this time as they staunchly avoid looking at each other.

“Fuck this, I’m gonna get a drink. You want a drink?”

“The Impala’s dry man, we didn’t get a chance to stop before we came up here.”

“Hello. Hotel. They gotta have liquor.”

“I don’t want anything.”

Dean stuffs his feet into his boots. “Salt line…” he starts.

“Jesus, what am I? Four?”

“Don’t leave the room.” Dean points a finger at him.

Sam points a decidedly different finger at Dean which Dean ignores.

***

In the dining room, he hits the jackpot.

Fully stocked bar.

He even finds an unopened bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label.

He feels bad for about 3.2 seconds before he slides a glass onto the shiny bar top and cracks the bottle open.

He sits at one of the tall stools and spins the glass idly in his hands.

“Gentlemen rarely drink alone.”

He looks up and rolls his eyes at the sight before him. The man is tall and slender, thinner in the shoulders than either Dean or Sam, older in the face and eyes.

It’s the eyes that always give away age and this spook has ‘ancient’ written across his dark orbs. Dean has to stifle a laugh at his outfit, baggy oxford pants with pleats and a wide bottom. His suit jacket is cut loose as well, all in shades of grey.

“Lucky for me, I’m not a gentleman. Nice outfit,” Dean says dryly.

The man pulls up a stool next to Dean. “Do you mind?”

“Actually, I kinda do. It’s a personal rule. I don’t socialize with the dead. I usually just salt and burn them.”

“Yes, I know. It’s horrible for business.”

“Lemme guess. You’re here to give me some sob story about how you’ve got no where else to go, and you just want to stay at the hotel forever and ever with all the other spooks, braiding each other’s hair and having tea parties.”

The man is silent as Dean shoots back the rest of his glass of whiskey.

“And I’ll tell you what, I don’t give a shit.” Dean slams his glass down forcefully on the bar, glaring at the man.

“I don’t imagine you do.” The man’s eyes travel up and over Dean carefully. “What is it that you think you can accomplish here?”

“Spring cleaning. Time to move on, old boy. Clear out.”

“Old boy,” the man repeats lowly, seemingly amused by Dean. “Tell me, Dean, how old do you think I am?”

“Don’t know, don’t care.”

“Of course not. How foolish of me.” He smiles and it’s all teeth and flashing white, not reaching his eyes. “I must say, people like you… You’re quite the thorn in my side, Dean Winchester.”

“Is that so?” Dean pours himself another inch of Johnny Walker.

“You and your brother Sam traipsing around the country, clearing out ghosts.”

“Dirty job, but someone’s got to do it.”

“What would it take, to get you to stop?”

Dean pauses, drink halfway to his lips, and he sets the glass down slowly. “What?”

“What would it take,” repeats the man slowly in his liquid mercury voice, “to get you to stop?”

“Nothing.”

The man smiles again, only this time, there’s no teeth and his eyes light up with glee. “Everyone has something they want, Dean. Everyone has a quiet wish, a dark, little secret, something, _someone_ perhaps? Someone who’s maybe gone over to the other side already? Someone you’d like back?”

Dean’s blood curls cool and solid into a lump in his belly. “What are you?”

“Took you a while, didn’t it?”

Dean slides off the stool, feeling very naked with out a shotgun or iron poker or even his knife for crying out loud. He takes a step backward.

“You’re not just a ghost. You’re it. You’re the thing that’s here.”

“The thing that has no name?” he sighs. “Of course I have a name, it’s just that no one’s bothered to ask.” He slides off his barstool and takes a step closer to Dean. “So, tell me, is there someone on the other side you’d maybe want back? Someone dear enough to you that you’d consider giving up the ghost, shall we say?”

It’s too dark in the dining room suddenly and he wishes he’d bothered to turn some lights on. Not that it would matter, but even Dean Winchester, hunter, feels better in the light.

“No. No dice.”

“No one?” The man bobs his head. “Impressive. Usually people snatch that request right up.” He raises one hand to his mouth and places his forefinger against his lips. “Let’s come at this from the other side, so to speak.” He smiles at his own words. “I know there’s someone you’d do anything to keep on _this_ side.”

“You stay the fuck away from Sam.”

“Bingo. C’mon, Dean. Bartering’s no fun if one party simply refuses to play. You stop hunting ghosts and I’ll leave Sam alone.”

“Why the fuck do you care about the ghosts anyway? It’s not like you can know all of them.”

“I’ll answer your question with a question: What’s the point of being king, if you have no subjects?”

“What the fuck are you?” Dean’s backing up step by step and the man, the _thing_ just keeps coming closer.

“Do you have any idea, can your miniscule, finite brain comprehend how long it has taken to pull myself up out of the abyss? Do you know how long I had to wait for someone like her? Someone who could call to the dead, someone who could _talk_ to the dead, someone who the dead _listened_ to? And every time you salt and burn a set of bones, you steal from me.

“Your brother could be useful to me, he’s certainly got his own set of talents and when he realizes them all… he could be magnificent. But I would leave him to you if you agree to stop. You can kill the vampires, you can send the demons back to hell, you can burn anything else that comes across your path, but leave the dead to me. To us.”

“You don’t belong here.”

The both turn at the sound of Farrah’s voice. She’s standing in the doorway to the kitchen, quiet and somber, staring intently at the man in the suit.

“Look who we woke up,” says the man playfully.

“You don’t belong here.”

The man’s smile fades slightly as Farrah takes a step toward him and he swallows carefully and starts to pull at his collar. She’s got the same discoloration to her skin that Dean remembers from the maze. The grey pallor to her complexion that’s set off by tiny silver slivers in her eyes. She’s in her bedclothes, a black tank-top and black yoga pants. The tank-top leaves her shoulders exposed and Dean can see the scar Oliver told them about, the one she got in room 43, glinting in the half-light. Slightly shiny and glossy in the darkened room.

“You can’t keep me away forever.”

“You don’t belong here,” she repeats and Dean’s suddenly a little grateful she’s not quite human.

Until she walks right through a table with a set of chairs on top of it. His eyes widen as she gets closer and he realizes, she’s not entirely there. She ghosts through several more stationary objects on her way forward until she stops right in front of Dean and the man. Dean can see the scar on her shoulder clearly now, like claw marks were someone or something tried to grab her. He turns with knowing eyes to look at the man.

“Come now, Fay. Let’s be friends, shall we? You don't want to go back to room 43, do you?”

“I’m not a child anymore. You can’t pull me in there.”

“Maybe not. But there are other ways.”

“Go away.” Her eyes flare slightly with silver, as does her scar tissue, sending out a quick pulse of light.

The man flinches. “Don’t be this way, Farrah.”

“I said go away. Go back.” Another shot of light from her eyes and her shoulder and the man stumbles back.

“Farrah,” he warns. “I’m tired of playing with you.”

“There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile.”

He falls back another step and flickers once. “Little girl! I’m warning you.”

“He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.”

The man falls to the ground, flickering twice. “You do this Farrah, you send me back now and next time, I’ll punch a hole into this world. A big, gaping hole.”

“He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse.”

“And I’ll drag you back through it, kicking and screaming and I’ll enjoy every minute of it!” He’s shouting now, his voice taking on a strange tinny sound that’s reminiscent of nails jostling in an old coffee can. He is snapping in and out of reality madly, spending less and less time visible.

“And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”

There’s a ‘pop’ sound and he’s gone. Dean’s leaning away, out of Farrah’s space as she stares at the ground where the man used to be. He takes a step backward and it catches her attention and she turns her eyes to his.

They’re black like coal, with silver, marbleized veins running through them. She tilts her head as though the sight of him confuses her.

“Christo,” he spits out, for lack of anything better to say.

She blinks twice at him; doe eyed flaps of her lashes.

“Farrah.”

Dean breathes a sigh of relief at the sight of Oliver, pushing through the swinging door from the kitchen. Farrah turns her freaky eyes to him, blinks twice more and they’re back to normal.

“You should go back now.” Oliver’s voice is steady and low.

“Is it getting late?”

“Yes, Farrah, it’s getting late.”

“Okay, Ollie.”

In the split-second it takes Dean to blink, she’s gone. Dean stares at the space where she was for a moment longer before flicking his gaze to Oliver.

Oliver’s hobbling over to the bar on his crutches. He grabs a glass from behind the shelf and pours himself a drink.

“I bet you could use another one of these,” he says easily, pouring whiskey in Dean’s glass.

Wordlessly, Dean makes his way back to the bar, hesitating at the chair.

“He won’t be back. Not tonight anyway.”

“And Farrah?”

“She’ll sleep like the dead after that.” He realizes what he just said and his eyes tighten at the corners before he takes a big swig of liquor. “Although I’ll probably have to bandage her shoulder. It always bleeds after.”

“What the fuck was that?”

Oliver swirls the liquid in its glass. “That was… that was it. That was the thing I was hoping you and your brother would know how to kill. But you don’t know what it is either.”

Dean finally takes a seat.

“And Farrah?”

“She’s not dangerous. Not to you or your brother.”

“Yeah, well, forgive me if I don’t take your word for it.”

“You saw how she was. As soon as I tell her it’s late, she leaves.”

“I saw her walk through furniture. What the fuck is that all about?”

“I don’t know any term for it other than the ridiculous new age ones. I guess you’d call it astral projection. She… leaves her body behind. Like one of them.”

“One of who?”

“The dead.” He takes a large swallow of his whiskey, grimacing at the burn. “She’s been doing it since we were little. Since room 43.”

“So, what? She just checks out of her body and takes a stroll around the hotel?”

This time when Oliver grimaces, it’s at Dean’s words. “Yes.”

“And then what?”

“And then nothing,” replies Oliver with a shrug.

“What’s that mean to her? It’s getting late?”

“If she’s out of her body too long, it takes her a long time to recover. She’s tired, sick. Gets vertigo. Things like that.”

“Why does she do it?”

“You saw why,” says Oliver, gesturing to the space where the man had been. “She’s more powerful out of her body than in it. I don’t know why, but it’s like her… flesh limits her. But when she’s like that… when she’s out… it’s like she has no concept that she should be in a body. I have to remind her to return. She’s never gone back on her own. And she’s also… different. She knows me, or rather, she knows she trusts me. But I don’t think she knows exactly why. I’ve never been entirely sure she knows exactly who I am.”

“What happens when she wakes up?”

“She remembers everything. She can tell you exactly what happened and what she did or saw. But she’s removed from it while it’s happening. She told me once it’s like being in a dream world. She knows what’s she’s doing and why she’s doing it, but it’s like she’s cut off from everything else.”

Dean takes a stiff drink. “What the fuck is your sister?”

Oliver swirls his glass and lets out a wry huff. “I’d been hoping you could tell me.”

“Why in hell do you stay here?”

“If I could get her to leave, I would. I’d pack us up tonight, right now and if that thing won’t let us take a car, I’d walk down that fucking mountain, bum leg and all. But she won’t leave them.”

“Who? The ghosts?”

“Yes. The ghosts,” he says bitterly. “I know you’re listening,” he calls out to them, taking another drink. “She says she has to stay, to protect them from it. Him. That thing that was here tonight. And she’s right. It wants them as much as it wants her, just in a different way. Maybe they could leave. They could move on or hell, I don’t know, find another hotel to haunt,” he says mirthlessly. “But they won’t. Or can’t. I don’t even know anymore and frankly, I don’t care. I just want out.”

“She wants you to leave. She asked us, when we first came, to take you.”

“I’m sure she did.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Would you leave your brother here? In this place?”

“No.”

“Well there you have it. And like I said, she won’t go. She just feels this goddamn responsibility to them. As if being able to talk to them, do things for them makes her responsible for them. Jesus. Sometimes I think she forgets she’s not one of them. Like I’m the only thing keeping her on this side.”

The temperature in the room is dropping and on his next exhale, Dean can see the fine grey puff of his breath.

“It’s getting cold in here.”

“I know. They’re pissed and trying to make me uncomfortable. For daring to talk about Farrah leaving, but she’s my sister.” His voice is rising, getting louder. “She was my sister before she was ever your anything,” he shouts at the dead air.

It scares Dean in that moment, how much he and Oliver have in common. It unnerves him that in this remote place, full of the dead and things he can’t explain, that he should find someone who said out loud the exact thing he feels about Sam. Sam was his brother before he was ever anybody else’s anything. Whatever Sam’s powers mean, whatever path is being set out before him, he was Dean’s first.

“They’d get rid of me too, if they could. Try to make me so miserable I would leave, but if there’s one lesson that _thing_ taught them, is that I won’t go easily,” says Oliver, gesturing down at his bad leg. “And Farrah would never forgive them if they hurt me.” He finishes his drink. “It’s late. I’m maudlin and depressed.” He shuffles off the chair and starts to hobble away. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

Dean watches him go and takes another big swig of whiskey before heading back to his room. Once there, Sam stares at him questioningly as he checks and rechecks the salt lines and locks.

“What happened to you?”

“I think we might be a little fucked.”

***

Contrary to what Dean expected, Sam gets really excited as Dean tells him what happened downstairs between the unknown man and Farrah.

Then again, Sam’s always been a little off.

“I think I’ve got this figured out, Dean,” he says a little breathlessly. He’s got the laptop, Francis’ journals and sheets of loose paper spread out before him on the bed and is flipping between all three.

“Thank god because the sooner we leave this freakshow behind, the happier I’ll be. So,” he claps his hands and rubs them together. “What is it and how do we make it dead?”

“I think it’s an ancient Sumerian god.”

“Oh good, and here I thought it was gonna be something hard.” Dean rolls his eyes. “Honestly, whatever happened to a good old fashioned salt and burn?”

Sam ignores Dean’s mutterings as he flips between Francis’ journal and the laptop. “It’s a little hard to decipher in some cases, but this symbol, the one with the three triangles,” he holds it up for Dean to see, “is the cuneiform symbol for mountain, or _kur_. Now, _kur_ is one of those words that doesn’t translate well, or I guess it translates fine, it’s just that it can translate into a few different things. One of which as I said, is mountain.”

Sam’s in full on geek mode, flashing papers at Dean, showing him websites about stone tablets unearthed in god-forsaken places and painstakingly reconstructed and translated over vast spans of time.

“This mountain idea was sometimes used by the ancients to depict the underworld or the nether world. I mean to them it was used to depict any foreign land but when they started getting mythological, they used this idea of a foreign land as the ultimate way to describe the underworld. And then they also had this notion that Kur, with a capital K, was this monster that lived beneath the mountain and he was sometimes seen as a dragon or a large serpent.”

“It just gets better and better,” mutters Dean.

“The closest Greek or Roman god would be Hades or Pluto, and it’s a similar thing where their names end up becoming synonymous with the land of the Dead. There are also some parallel Persephone myths with Kur dragging down a consort for himself who then becomes trapped in the underworld for unspecified amounts of time.”

“Didn’t Persephone get stuck down there because she ate something? She could’ve left, but she ate or drank something.”

“Uh, yeah,” says Sam as he scans the website. “I think she had a pomegranate seed.”

“Stupid pomegranates,” Dean murmurs, recalling what Sam said when he came out of the maze. _I didn’t eat them, she will. She eats them all on purpose._

“Pardon?” Sam asks, nose crinkling up in confusion.

Dean shakes his head. “Nothing. How do we kill this fucker?”

“I’m not exactly sure.”

“I thought you had this all figured out.”

“I’m pretty sure this is the _what_ of what we’re dealing with, but I haven’t found exact details on how to kill it yet.”

“What’s it say in the mythology?”

Sam shrugs. “On most of the sites I’ve seen it just says ‘and then they slay the dragon,’ I mean, it’s not like they give out the detailed instructions, they were working with writing on tablets and I’m sure they had to leave out a lot of the details. Other sites are more focused on a poem or fable that deals with another mythological being, Inanna who descends down to the ‘land of no return,’ is killed, and then later revived. The problem is, when she comes back to the living world, the ghosts are of the underworld are still attached to her. Her sister, Ereshkigal is the queen of the underworld and the one that killed Inanna when she came down. Although there’s some speculation that they are just two sides of the same coin and are supposed to represent two halves of one person.”

“God save me from mythology. Seriously. If you want to teach people a lesson, just fucking write it down. But this bullshit smoke and mirrors and hiding details in myths and lore… Jesus, it makes our lives hell,” Dean says, rubbing his hand over his eyes. He’s so fucking tired he’s seeing double. “So this Ereshkigal, what’s her deal.”

“Well, I think she would be the one that’s most related to the Persephone myth. They say that she was stolen from the living and forced to be queen of the dead.”

“And the king? Kur?”

“He’s not always in all the mythology. In a lot of the references I’ve found only Ereshkigal’s is noted as the ruler of the dead, and there’s no reference to a king at all. Her alternate name, Irkalla, is also used as the name for the underworld. Some myths actually say that she became queen unwillingly and took over.”

“So… she gets kidnapped, taken to the underworld and stages a coup d’etat?” He laughs dryly. “Nice. Gives a whole new spin on ‘heaven doesn’t want me and hell’s afraid I might take over.’” He collapses down on the edge of the bed. “So what you’re telling me is we have to figure out a way to kill the Sumerian god of the underworld. Fantastic. Isn’t he technically already dead?”

“Technically.”

“Fuck I hate mythology. What about the Greeks? How did they kill gods?”

“Um, I think they only banished them. Pit of Tartarus, I think.”

“And I hear it’s lovely in the summer,” Dean deadpanned before frowning. “I thought Zeus killed his old man?”

Sam thinks for a second. “Uh, yeah, but he was a god too. Pretty sure we can’t pull that out of our bag of tricks.”

“So we’re fresh out of god killing ideas, is that it?”

Sam fidgets.

“What?” asks Dean warily.

“Dude, I don’t think _we_ can do it.”

Dean nods. “Farrah.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I pretty much got that from the queen of the dead stories too.” He eyeballs Sam. “Think she can do it?”

“I think she’s gonna have to. You said she fought him off in the dining room,” Sam prompts hopefully.

“Yeah, but he seemed pretty pissed about that.”

“Well, I’ll keep researching. I mean, something might come up.” Sam shrugs.

“Yeah,” Dean says thoughtfully. “Yeah.”

Sam shuts the laptop. “Look, we can’t do anything else about it tonight. Let’s call it, and start fresh tomorrow.”

“Do not leave this room without me,” Dean warns.

Sam thinks about arguing and opens his mouth to do just that, but at the last moment, shuts it with a click of his teeth. “Okay.”

“Okay, like okay?” Dean’s stunned they aren’t having another fight about this.

“Dude, it’s nearly three in the morning. So yeah, okay.”

“Okay.”

***

Sam dreams of the maze.

In his dream, it’s not cold, and there’s no snow, but it’s still lifeless and barren. Like a winter where someone came in and snatched the temperature and weather away but left behind the desolate landscape.

Grey would be the best word to describe it all. Grey with patches of brown and black smeared carelessly around.

He comes to a gate. Large, white, curving spires reach up ending in sharp edged gold spikes and his eyes travel along the length of them until his neck hurts from the angle at which he’s tilted it. It’s the only way to break through this particular section of the maze and he knows he has to go through it.

The metal is neither cool nor soft when he touches it and it’s hard to tell if he’s exerting any pressure on it all. His fingertips are strangely immune to any feeling. The gate swings open silently, the only sound his heart thudding in his ears.

As he passes through the gate, he realizes he’s sockfoot. He looks back and sees his shoes still on the other side. He turns away from them.

The ground is shapeless beneath his feet. Neither soft nor hard. There’s a strange smoothness to it that makes him want to curl his toes deeper into his socks.

He finds a second gate. Knotted, twisted roots and branches make up this one, intertwined and tangled so that he can’t tell where one branch ends and another begins. He touches the wood and it writhes over itself, creating an opening. He steps through the hole, having to crouch down to make it through the opening.

Again he looks back.

This time he sees his hoodie left behind.

He continues walking, his eyes searching for something, anything to focus on. He has the impression that he’s traveling very far, yet not far at all and the sensation gives him vertigo and makes him shake his head a few times to clear it.

Another gate. Opaque glass that soundlessly cracks when he touches it and shrinks in on itself, closing up seamlessly behind him when he’s through. His socks on the other side.

He loses track of space and time again, until he’s at the fourth gate. Made of polished marble, it shines even in the absence of any direct source of light. It’s a solid monolith of dark grey, veined with white and black. When he places his fingertips against it, it yawns open without a sound, but he imagines he can feel the tremors the movement causes in his toes.

He leaves his watch on the ground.

She’s waiting for him at the fifth gate, her obsidian black eyes glaring silver sparks at him, reflecting the flames that comprise the portal. Blue and orange tendrils spit out from the gate, but there is no heat, no burn from the flame. Her face is expressionless as she holds a hand up.

“You do not have enough to pass,” she says simply.

He stupidly calculates he’s still got his shirt, his pants and his underwear and that should get him through the remaining gates.

He knows there are seven.

He was invited.

“He does not decide who passes. _I_ decide who goes through the gates and who doesn’t. And you won’t.”

He has enough to pass.

She shakes her head, reading his mind in this dreamlike world. “I will not take anything from you in payment.”

He frowns. He wants to see what is on the other side.

She shakes her head again. “It is not for you. I will not let you pass.”

He looks past her at the blue flames again, and when he turns back to her, she is handing him back all his possessions.

He doesn’t want to take it. He wants to know what is on the other side.

“Come ask me again, before you leave forever, and I will tell you. But this is not for you. Not now. Not ever.”

He wants to ask why. Maybe he’s not worthy.

“It has nothing to do with worth. This path is not for you.”

He’s holding the bundle of his possessions, though he has no memory of taking it. He stares dumbly down at it. When he looks up again, she’s gone.

***

He wakes, sitting upright stiffly. As if he’s triggered some kind of ‘Sam-radar’ Dean pokes his head out of the bathroom, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. He grunts at Sam, which Sam thinks is supposed to be some kind of a ‘good morning’ and then his head ducks back into the bathroom, like a groundhog back into its hole.

He’s back out a few seconds later, a trail of steam scented with soap, minty toothpaste and shaving cream in his wake. He jerks his head at Sam.

“What with the face?” Dean’s eyes narrow. “Nightmare?”

Sam shakes his head and has to clear his throat before he speaks. “No. Just tired.”

“Uh-huh.” Dean’s tones screams ‘I don’t believe you,’ but he doesn’t say anything else.

Sam scrunches up his face. “I need coffee.”

He showers quickly, grateful that there’s ample hot water even after Dean was done and minutes later they head down to the kitchen and find a fresh pot of coffee already made.

“Freaky Farrah and Odd Oliver must already be up,” says Dean.

“Dean, c’mon,” Sam replies as he pours two cups of coffee for them.

Dean dismisses his tone with a wave of his hand.

Oliver hobbles in seconds later, jerking his head in greeting.

“We were just helping ourselves to coffee,” says Sam.

Oliver nods and then hands Sam a piece of paper. Sam unfolds it and stares at the rosetta star that’s been crudely drawn.

“What’s this?”

“Sometimes, after nights like last night, when Farrah… when she… when she’s out, afterward, I sometimes dream of that symbol.”

Sam stares at it for a moment longer and then hands it over to Dean. Dean questions Sam with his eyes quickly and Sam gives him an affirmative gesture. Sam recognizes the symbol as vaguely reminiscent of the star of Inanna, an eight pointed rosette that’s known as her symbol.

“You know what it is, don’t you?” says Oliver, realization dawning on him.

Sam again remembers why it’s a bad idea to be in the room with a psychic. “I mean, we don’t know for sure, but we’ve got some ideas, yeah.”

Oliver scrutinizes Sam for a moment longer. “And you don't want to tell me,” he says lowly. “You’re… afraid to tell me.” Sam hedges away, as if the slight increase in distance will help keep Oliver out of his head.

“Okay, no fair using the freaky psychic shit,” interrupts Dean.

“She’s my sister.”

“Doesn’t mean you can poke around in his brain on a fishing expedition.”

Oliver’s jaw tightens. “But you know something.”

“Look,” says Sam. “All we have are a few loose theories and even if we’re right, we don’t know what to do about it yet.”

Oliver looks back and forth between the two of them. His sigh is full of resignation and he stares up at the ceiling briefly.

“Okay,” he says quietly and he repeats the word one more time, as though soothing his own mind with it.

“Where is your sister, anyway?” asks Dean.

“Downstairs. The pool is…” another sigh. “There’s water in it and she’s… she woke up this morning obsessed with it.”

“She say anything about last night?”

Oliver shakes his head. “No. I bandaged her shoulder last night, it was bleeding like a stuck pig and she woke up and didn’t even notice it. She was just fixated on the pool. She went down there an hour ago and…” he pauses and they can almost see his brain straining to reach out and then he sags back. “She’s turned off. Not letting anything out or in.”

Dean thinks back to when he was downstairs by the pool with Farrah and she had first seen the water collecting in the deep end of the pool.

 _I think it’s trying to come through._

He can hear the way her voice sounded when she said it. Scared. Frantic. Awed.

Dean studies Oliver and while Dean’s not psychic, he can read most people like a New York Times Bestseller, and Oliver doesn’t appear worried, just annoyed or exasperated.

Farrah hasn’t told him about what she thinks the water means.

“Well, Sam and I wanna ask her a few questions, so we’ll pop down there and see what’s what.”

Oliver nods. “All right. I’ll be in the solarium if you need me.” He step-shuffles out of the kitchen, the rubber soles of his crutches making squeaking noises against the linoleum. Sam waits until he’s sure Oliver’s gone before turning back to Dean.

“How much do you think we should tell Farrah?”

“ _We_ aren’t going to tell her anything. You are going to stay upstairs with Oliver and I will talk to Farrah.”

“What? Dean, why?”

“There’s something freaky about that pool, Sam. Yesterday when I was down there, Farrah seemed to think that thing was trying to get through and after last night, I’m betting that’s why she’s so freaked out by it.”

“You can’t keep doing this, Dean.”

“Doing what?”

“You can’t try to keep me from things, places, whatever just because you think it’s dangerous. Our jobs are dangerous. Our lives are dangerous.”

“You think I don’t know that? I just don’t see the point of waving the red flag in front of the bull.”

“It’s not like I take gratuitous risks, Dean. I’m just trying to get the job done.”

“Sammy…”

“I’m not having this argument with you again, Dean. I’m just not. Now let’s go downstairs and see what’s going on.”

He doesn’t give Dean time to respond and instead brushes past him out the other exit of the kitchen that leads through the dining room to the main hall and then the stairwell to the basement.

They don’t say anything to each other as they descend down the stairs but each of them can feel the chill sinking into the air. By the time they are in the pool room, their breath is coming out in silver puffs.

The pool is full.

By the temperature drop in the room, the water flooding the pool must be frigid. The liquid is pouring in, sending sluices of water overflowing into the banks and the spill-off drains. They hear Farrah cursing and then the clank of a pipe or a wrench hitting the ground. She comes out of the maintenance room and stops short at the sight of them.

“What are you doing down here?” Her voice is hard and flat, matching her eyes as they flick angrily over Dean and Sam standing at the edge. Her shoulder is bleeding through the bandage as well as the t-shirt she’s wearing, dark crimson staining the blue fabric and turning it brown.

“Sleeping beauty,” Dean cracks. “Go on any other late walks last night?”

She scowls at him. “No,” she says as she rubs her fingers into the bridge of her nose. “Look, I don’t think you should be down here right now. The pool…” she gestures to the water gurgling up and over edge.

“You got a shutoff valve?” Sam asks.

“Yes,” she answers easily. “And it’s shut off. All the drains are wide open too.”

The three of them stare at the water again.

“I know your car didn’t start yesterday, but I think… I think it might be distracted trying to get in and if you tried to leave now, I think… I think you could make it.”

Dean’s sorely tempted to clap his hands together and take her up on her offer but before he can, Sam’s opening his mouth and spouting off geek-style.

“We think we might know what it is,” he’s saying and Farrah’s staring up at him with wary eyes.

“I don’t care what it is. Can you stop it?”

Sam hesitates. “We’re working on that,” he begins. “But I don’t think that we’re going to be the ones that can stop it.”

She knows immediately what he means and her eyes drift back to the rough surface of the pool. “I… I can’t…”

Dean’s mouth opens slightly as the realization hits him. She _knows_.

“You know. You know how to stop it.”

She starts shaking her head furiously. “No. I…I don’t. I…can’t.” She’s still looking away from them, transfixed by the water surging up from the center of the pool.

“But you suspect something,” says Sam, his voice softer and kinder than Dean’s.

Her mouth opens and closes and she rubs a hand over her forehead. “Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just a thought, a feeling.”

Sam takes a step closer to her and puts a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You can tell us. Maybe we can help. Whatever it is.”

Her entire posture screams her apprehension, her hand shaking as she wipes her bangs out of her eyes. She finally chances a look up at Sam and catches his earnest eyes with her own. Dean thinks they’re just about to get somewhere.

And that’s when Farrah and Sam get sucked into the pool.

One moment he’s standing there, staring at the two of them, and then next, before he can even twitch, they’re both snatched backward so forcefully that one of Farrah’s shoes is left on the tiled deck of the pool. He can see them, under the water, tangled in each other, arms and hands gripping at one another.

Something’s pulling Sam, pulling him toward the deep end and Farrah is trying to pull him back but she has no leverage underwater, nothing to pull toward, pull against.

Dean takes one short step backward and then jumps forward, into the pool.

He curses loudly when he hits a hard surface, the shock of his landing jolting up from his heels and settling with a painful crack in the base of his spine.

The surface of the pool is like glass and he’s trapped on top. He punches at the implacable surface, each blow sending a dull thud of pain up his arm that touches his elbow and then his shoulder as the shock-wave works its way up his skeletal system. He scrambles to his feet and slip-slides across the surface, his eye catching sight of Farrah’s toolbox by the door to the maintenance room.

He upends the entire thing, sending tools sprawling with clicks and clacks of metal on metal until he spies a large wrench and he grabs it. Rushing back to the pool, he slides across the hard surface, dropping to his knees as he reaches the middle of the pool. He can still see Farrah and Sam twisting and turning, Sam’s been sucked to the deep end, his legs disappearing down the drain at the center of the deepest part of the pool.

Dean beats against the crystalline surface with the wrench, and finally a star shape crack blossoms with a loud crunch and he pounds away at the weak center trying to punch through. The only thing he can hear is the smack of the wrench hitting the surface of the pool again and again. Sam’s past his waist now into the drain, Farrah bracing her legs against the bottom of the pool and keep her arms under Sam’s, pulling, trying to keep him.

There’s a horrible sucking sound and his eyes widen as Sam vanishes down the impossibly small drain.

Time seems to hang for a moment; the split second after Sam disappears strung out into an infinite loop of space-time; heavy, dense and impossible.

Then Dean’s falling, the surface beneath him transformed back into water and he’s pulled under, the wrench falling from his hands and sinking to the bottom. Christ it’s _cold_. The icy water claws a sharp exhale of the only air he had in his lungs. He kicks easily to the surface and breaks through just in time to see Farrah do the same. They both pull for the shallow end, Farrah’s strokes turning into an odd hop-run-jump once her feet touch the ground. They stagger out of the pool dripping, Farrah sputtering and coughing up black water and spitting it out with chunks of brown moss onto the ceramic surface.

Dean grabs her roughly, mindless to her choking and to the gush of brackish slag running down her chin.

“Where the fuck is my brother? Where did it take him?”

She’s a limp, shivering mess, unable to answer him and he shakes her roughly her head lolling backwards sharply.

“Where?” he shouts. “Where is he?”

When Oliver’s crutch collides with his shoulder roughly, it registers enough with Dean that he drops his hold on Farrah and she falls over, nearly breaking her teeth before she manages to get her hands under her. Oliver slides down next to her, pushing hair out of her face and thumping her soundly on the back. She clutches to him, fingers white-knuckled in their grip on his jeans and his shirt.

She coughs a few more times, staring up at Oliver with large eyes blinking, pulling at him and him at her, until she’s worked her way into his lap. They lock eyes and whatever they’re saying, they’re doing it inside their heads. She gags up one last mouthful of brown and green sludge and it dribbles over her chin before she turns to Dean.

“Room 43. He’s in room 43.”

***

He pushes to his feet and takes off running, getting up the stairs three at a time and rounding the corner into the long hallway on a skid of wet shoes. He’s a little breathless by the time he gets to his room, grabs a gun from the table and rushes back down the hallway to room 43. When the handle doesn’t so much as budge under his fingers, he shoots the lock out with three shots and then immediately throws his body against door.

He’s still pounding at the door, jamming his shoulder into it and leaving a splotchy wet spot on the wood when Farrah catches up with him.

“You can’t break in,” she gasps, bent over, clutching at her soaked jean-clad knees, trying to catch her breath.

“You just fucking watch me,” he grumbles, rearing back for another go at it.

“It’s not -” she chokes out before setting into a coughing fit. “It’s not just a door. And you can’t just go in there. Even if you burned the door down, it’s not the door that’s the entrance. Do you understand?”

He pushes his gun into the waistband of his jeans and grabs her by the shoulders again, like he did downstairs. He walks her backward roughly until she slams up against the wall. Her hands come up and push against him.

“I’ll tell you what I understand. You tell me my brother’s in there and I’m going to break that door down and go get him.”

“You can’t. It’s not about the door. And even if you got it down, you can’t go in there. You need a way out. Don’t you get it? I went in there when I was six and I _had no way out_.”

“Your dad got you out,” Dean counters, jerking her roughly.

“Because he had Ollie on the outside! And he prepared himself to go in.”

“Then fucking get prepared because you’re going in there and you’re getting my brother back.”

He can see the second the panic truly sets in and she starts to twist and writhe in his grasp. “I can’t! I can’t!” She keeps repeating the same words over and over, her breath starting to hitch and catch, full blown panic attack taking over her system.

“Tell me what’s in there,” Dean demands. “You tell me.” He shakes her a little.

“It’s nothing,” she chokes out.

“The hell it is, you tell me what you saw.”

“No! You don’t understand. _There’s nothing there._ ” She jerks violently and manages to clock him under the jaw with her elbow and he stumbles backward into the hallway more from surprise than the blow, tripping over the carpet and landing hard on his ass. She slides down the wall, coming to a stop in a crouching position on the floor.

Oliver finds them like that seconds later, his laborious trip up the stairs leaving him breathless and grim. Farrah curls in on herself, hiccuping and breathing in short gasps as Oliver manages to awkwardly slide down next to her.

“There’s nothing there,” she says again quietly, numbly. “There’s no sound. You can’t hear yourself breathe or hear your own heartbeat. If you could then maybe you could tell time, tell how much time is passing. But you can’t. And there’s no light. But it’s not dark, it’s just… even dark would be something. And you can’t see your own hands, or your feet. You aren’t standing on anything because if you were, you could run, you could move and then maybe you could count your footsteps and tell yourself that you’re going somewhere, you’re doing _something_. But you’re just… there. And it isn’t cold and it isn’t hot and you aren’t breathing so there’s no smell, there’s no air. You can’t even panic because it’s like your body’s not there.” Her hands are creeping up her face, covering her eyes and then her ears, then traveling down to run over her legs, like she can’t keep them still. “You just _exist_ but there’s nothing to prove it, nothing to validate it. I think… I think it’s like a punishment? A place to put the dead or the living to punish them. To teach them to behave. Teach me to behave.” She shudders and rubs at the bloody patch on her shoulder.

“Then what gave you that?” Dean asks with a jerk of his head, his mind refusing to process her words for the moment.

She fingers the wound lightly. “That’s where it grabbed me and pushed me in. And when my father came to take me, it grabbed me there again to try to take me back.” She looks up at Oliver. “Ollie, I don’t wanna go. I don’t wanna go back in.” She falls forward into her brother’s arms and he rubs her back and makes quiet shushing noises.

“I know, Fay. But I also know you can’t leave him in there. Not when you know what it’s like. Can you?”

Dean’s getting ready to push to his feet and start fighting with her when she slowly shakes her head at Oliver. Dean feels the claws that are gripping his chest relax fractionally at Farrah’s quiet acquiescence.

“You know I’ll keep you safe. I’ll be your way out. You know I will.” Oliver pulls her close and it must be hell on his bad leg to be folded on the floor in their awkward position, but he gives no indication. “I’ll be your way back.” He smoothes her wet ponytail. “And after, we’ll leave here and never come back. I mean it, Fay. Let’s leave and never even _look_ back.”

She clutches him tighter and Dean sees something in her eyes before her lids fall over them. He feels suddenly sorry for Oliver and he doesn’t know why.

***

Farrah watches Oliver stir the pot on the stove, carefully stirring thirty times clockwise and then thirty times counter-clockwise. When he finally puts the spoon down she speaks.

“You never told me Dad gave you his book.”

Her tone is slightly accusatory, but not so much so that it causes an immediate confrontation. Oliver sighs heavily and sits down hard in the last empty chair at the table where Dean and Farrah are already seated.

“I foolishly hoped I’d never have to use it. But I think… I think I always knew I would.”

She nods solemnly. Oliver had told them about the book on the way downstairs from room 43 to the kitchen. If Farrah was going to get Sam out successfully, she would have to drink the same concoction her father had, and Oliver declared it had to sit over night. They had stopped by the Winchester’s room to pick up the journal, sitting on the small desk where Sam had left it. Dean had changed out of his water logged clothes and met the twins back in the kitchen, where Farrah had changed as well, and Oliver was already at the stove. Oliver barely had to look at the recipe as he worked although he did glance at it to ensure he was correct. He’d carefully combined the ingredients listed; various spices, a few gemstones that he had hidden in his room, and random other ingredients until finally he had clipped some of his hair and tossed it in as well.

As potions went, it wasn’t nearly as grotesque as one would imagine and instead filled the kitchen with a warm spicy spell of hot cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper and curry. Oliver brings out a sharpie marker and as he uncaps it, he looks expectantly at Farrah. She pulls both the sleeves up on the cream fisherman’s sweater and puts her arms out, underside up on the table. Oliver’s tongue pokes out of the side of his mouth as he carefully copies the symbols from the book onto Farrah’s forearms.

“Do you know what it says?” asks Dean roughly as he watches.

Oliver shakes his head, never looking away. “No, but I think that together they are like wards.”

“They’re declarations,” Farrah says abruptly. “Declarations of intent that the wearer means to enter and retrieve something and should be, shall be, left alone, left to pass unhindered and without toll.”

Both men stare at her wordlessly and she tugs the sleeves of her sweater down to cover them up.

“How do you know that?” asks Oliver.

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I just… I just know it.”

Oliver’s eyes dart over to Dean. “Could you, uh…” Oliver points to the doorway. “Can you wait outside?”

“Why?”

“He has to do my back and chest too,” says Farrah flatly.

Dean nods quickly and heads to the dining room where, despite the fact that it’s before noon, he pours himself a drink to kill some time. He’s back in the kitchen five minutes later while Farrah cleans up. Oliver watches her move around the kitchen, not bothering to hide his gaze and after two minutes she glares at him.

“Jesus, Ollie, stop staring.” She tosses the sponge she used to clean the counters in the sink and sags into one of the chairs.

“I can’t help it,” he protests. “I’m worried.”

“I know you are, fuck, you’re pushing it all at me,” she complains, pressing her fingertips to her temples. They eyeball each other for a few seconds more and then look away at the same time.

“So this is it?” Dean asks. “We just wait now?”

“Yes,” they both snap at the same time.

“There’s got to be something else we can do, some other ritual that needs to be prepped or…” Dean starts, his voice trailing off. There seriously has to be something else to do because this? Waiting around? Doing nothing while Sam is trapped somewhere? It scrapes at his insides with a dull edge, like a spoon carving out a pumpkin, leaving him wet, hollow and raw.

“I’m afraid this is it,” says Oliver. “Until sunrise tomorrow.”

Another painfully heavy silence falls over the kitchen and it’s so pressing that when Farrah’s chair squeaks against the linoleum as she pushes it back, Oliver flinches slightly.

“I gotta get up and do something. I can’t just sit here,” she announces. “I’ll be around.”

Oliver’s eyes follow her and Dean knows that look. He knows it’s been on his face when Sam’s left and Dean’s wanted to stop him. But Oliver doesn’t say anything and Farrah leaves without turning back. Dean taps his thumb on the countertop rhythmically a few times before realizing what he’s doing and stopping abruptly.

“She’ll get him back.”

“You sound pretty sure of that,” says Dean absently.

“I am. I know my sister. I know she’s terrified of going back in that room, but she’ll do it and she’ll be successful. Farrah doesn’t do things halfway.”

Dean flicks his eyes over to Oliver. “I’m not leaving here without my brother. I don’t care how long it takes or what I have to do.”

“I know.”

“Thought you said you couldn’t read me.”

Oliver pushes painfully to his feet, getting his crutches underneath him. “I don’t have to be psychic to see that.”

***

The day is brutishly long and uneventful. Wherever Farrah has gone, it feels like she’s taken most of the ghosts with her and the hotel feels empty and vacant in a way it hasn’t since they arrived. Dean wanders aimlessly, finding himself outside room 43 a number of times throughout the day where he lingers in the hallway staring at the door. He tries the lock again, tries opening it again but there’s no real heart behind his actions. He tries to imagine a space, a void like the one Farrah described. A place with no sound, no sight, no texture or feeling and he finds it difficult. He wonders what exactly it is about the nothingness that is so terrifying. He wonders if the stretch of infinity presented to finite creatures with finite existences is just too much for the brain to process. The yawn of endlessness presented to beings that define everything in their lives with a start and a finish, or a before and an after, is so incomprehensible that it is horrible. He thinks a lot about Sam, contemplating if an experience like that is more or less horrific to his intricate brain than to someone with a lesser intellect. Farrah at six was traumatized, her father as well. Dean can’t help but wonder what Sam will be like when he gets out.

If he gets out.

Oliver is sure, steadfastly sure, that his sister can pull Sam back and it must be the blind faith that siblings have in one another that drives his conviction. Dean has no doubt what Sam is capable of, but currently, Sam’s rescue depends on someone else, and it is a rotten stone that sinks into Dean’s stomach and rests sickly. He truthfully doesn’t care who saves Sam as long as it is done, but he can’t help but wish for something to _do_.

He goes back to his room, intent on reviewing Francis’ journal, the second one that ghostly Charlie had given Sam. He nearly turns the room inside out looking for it but it’s gone and the anger that bubbles up is swift and hot. He’s storming down the stairs and punching at Oliver and Farrah’s small apartment door before he knows it.

He pounds three times and then turns the handle, finding it open. Oliver is in the midst of pushing himself out of his chair, bookkeeping materials spread out in front of him.

“What is it?” he asks.

Dean jerks his head around looking for the journal and it’s pretty clear that Oliver doesn’t have it.

“Where’s your sister?”

“I think she might be outside, actually but she’s blocking me pretty hard right now so I’m not sure. We can go look for her if you want.”

The thought of Oliver hobbling outside with his crutches on the snowy ground makes Dean shake his head. He huffs, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“What is it?” asks Oliver.

“Nothing. Just… absolutely nothing.”

Oliver nods and sinks carefully back into his chair. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“Being left waiting.”

Dean doesn’t say anything, tucking his chin lower, grinding his jaw. Out of the corner of his lashes, he sees Oliver gesture to the sofa.

“Sit.”

***

Wherever Farrah is, she doesn’t join them for dinner and Dean has an angry flash of panic that she’s somehow left and won’t go through with it.

Whatever _it_ is. He’s not exactly sure what’s going to happen tomorrow. He only has sketchy details from Oliver’s tale of what happened when they were children, and while Dean knows how trauma can sear a memory into your mind, even if you are very young, ( _Take your brother outside as fast as you can! Don’t look back! Now, Dean, go!_ ) he also knows that it doesn’t always tell the whole story ( _like a yellow eyed demon tearing his family apart_ ).

At his questioning look, Oliver speaks. “I still don’t know exactly where she is, but she’s around. She’ll be here tomorrow morning.”

Dean wonders how obvious his face must be for Oliver to read it so easily.

Oliver retires to his apartment and Dean finds himself outside room 43 again, crouched down against the wall opposite the door. Head tipped back, eyes half lidded, he stares at the solid wood. This late in the year, sunrise isn’t for hours.

He stays outside the room in the hallway until his butt goes numb from sitting on the floor and his eyes feel grainy and gritty. He pushes himself to his feet and makes it back to his room with heavy footsteps, falling onto one of the beds with a sigh. He knows he won’t sleep, but he just can’t think of anything else to do.

He doesn’t sleep so much as doze and when he hears the light taps on his door at three in the morning, he’s wide awake before he opens it.

Farrah stands there in her puffy winter coat, boots on. She looks tired, dark half-moons cradling her eyes. Her arms are crossed over her chest and she shifts back and forth on her feet nervously.

“What? What is it?” Dean asks. “It’s not sunrise yet,” he states, although he knows it’s redundant.

“No, I know. It’s not that. It’s… I need you to come with me.”

“What for?”

He doesn’t mean to sound pissy, he really doesn’t. But it’s three in the morning and he’s tired from worrying, strung out and stretched thin.

“It’s just… I have an idea about tomorrow. Well, it’s more than an idea. And I just… Can you just come with me? Outside. So bring your coat.”

He takes a moment to eyeball her and she shifts on her feet again and bites the inside of her lips.

“Yeah, okay,” he finally answers and she nods her head in quick relief as he turns to stuff his feet into his boots and drag a jacket up and over his arms.

“And can you bring a gun?”

That makes him pause again in confusion. Guns won’t work on any of the spirits and although he hasn’t actually tried to shoot a Sumerian God of the underworld before, he’s pretty sure it will be a bust. He doesn’t say anything as he slides his Colt into the waistband of his jeans. She waits until he closes the door behind him and then she leads him silently down the hall, to the staircase and then softly down the carpeted stairs.

“Where we going?”

“Um, can you wait until we get outside the hotel? Ollie’s sleeping and the ghosts are listening.”

He shrugs, not really caring, but the gesture goes unnoticed by Farrah who is several steps in front of him. They leave through the front door, Farrah taking time to close it quietly before she heads down the path with a quick, nervous gait. She uncrosses her arms and picks up a high intensity flashlight that was next to the front door and flicks it on, directing it forward along the path.

“So, we’re outside. Where are we going?”

“Do you remember I told you there was an Indian burial ground close by?” she turns her head slightly and waits for him to nod before she continues. “We’re going there. It can’t go there. I’m not sure why but I think because it’s sacred ground.”

He jogs two steps to fall in beside her. “Despite the fact going to sacred burial grounds at three in the morning is not all that unusual for me, why are we doing this?”

She flicks her eyes over to him quickly and he can just barely make out her features in the light bouncing off the snow from the flashlight. Her breath exits her mouth in grey puffs, jerking with her steps.

“I found my father’s journal. The one that Charlie gave Sam.”

“So you’re the one who filched it from the room?”

“It’s not like it was yours anyway,” she protests a little snootily. “And I might have seen some notes Sam took.”

“‘Might have’ as in ‘did’?”

“Yeah,” she says, her tone slightly grim. “I didn’t intend to snoop but when I saw my dad’s handwriting… and then Sam’s notes…” she sounds slightly bashful.

He waves a hand in dismissal. It’s not like the book had anything in it that Sam hadn’t already read. “So what did you make of it?”

“Well, it sounds like I’m all lined up to be goddess of the underworld,” she says dryly.

Dean doesn’t say anything and they continue on in silence for a few more steps. She sighs.

“That was the part where you were supposed to tell me I was totally fucking crazy and demand to return to the hotel immediately. No dice, huh?”

Dean cocks his head to one side. “It’s pretty fucked up shit, but…”

“I suppose you deal with stuff like this all the time.”

“Well, not _exactly_ like this, but it doesn’t totally fry my weird-o-meter either.”

She stops on the path for a moment and Dean realizes they’ve left behind the stone path some time ago and are following a dirt path which is still mostly covered by snow. Although there’s already at least one set of tracks, there and back. “Really?”

“Really.”

She looks at the same time impressed and slightly horrified. “Wow.” They start up again, resuming their walk in silence.

After several more minutes of walking down the slightly curving and twisting path, they reach an old fence which has a rickety set of stairs going up one side and down the other. Farrah gamely ambles up and then turns around a little to shine the light on the steps for Dean, which he finds somewhat amusing, given his propensity to be running around in the dark with Sam.

She takes a few more steps forward and then stops in front of an irregular shaped hole that’s about three feet deep. She places the flashlight on the ground, the beam pointing upward.

“The ground’s pretty solid and I’m not the best digger so that’s about as far as I got. Took me most of the afternoon and evening and fuck I’m tired. It took a lot longer than I thought it would. It doesn’t look anything like when people do it on tv. They always get such perfect corners.”

He stares down at the dug out and his eyes drift over to Farrah warily.

“Uh, what is it?” Dean asks, but he has a bad feeling he knows what it is. It’s not like he hasn’t seen a hundred of them in his lifetime.

“I think you know what it is.”

“What exactly are we talking about here, Farrah?”

“You know, I remember last night,” she says abruptly. “With you in the dining room, and I remember it was there and I made it leave. I’ve been making it leave for a long time now and it keeps coming back. And when it comes back, it comes back stronger. And I push harder and it comes back harder. _He_ comes back harder. Kur, I guess he’s called. And I don’t know if Ollie told you, but it’s… _easier_ to push at him when I’m not in my body. It’s easier when I’m like them. The dead. With no body. And last night, I had this dream… and there were these seven gates and I was in charge of them. And your brother was there and he wanted to pass, said he was invited and I don’t know where it came from but I knew, _I knew_ that it didn’t matter if he was invited or not, _I_ say who goes through the gates. And no one gets through unless I let them.” She finally meets Dean’s eyes. “I didn’t let him. Sam. I told him I wouldn’t let him in.”

Dean lets out the breath he’d been holding since she mentioned she dreamed of Sam.

“And this morning, when I woke up, I could feel him, it, pushing at the hotel. Trying to find his way in and I thought ‘well fuck, this is it, isn’t it?’ But I never thought he’d punch his way in and take your brother. But he did. And now that he knows he can do that… now that he knows he can kick his way in and snatch people… the hotel will never be safe again. He’ll take the ghosts and then in the spring, he’ll start on the living. Even if we close up, I think he’s strong enough to pull in the dead from elsewhere. Maybe the living too.

“But I think…. I feel like it took a lot of energy for him to do that this morning. Like he burned up a little too much. And I think this is my chance to stop him. For good. Get your brother back and then… I don’t know what the right word is. Stop him, kill him. And I have to be one of them to do it.”

Out here in the mountains, without the light pollution from the city, the night sky is awash with stars and it’s so beautiful, so perfect, Dean would swear it was fake.

“Why are we out here, Farrah?” asks Dean lowly.

She turns to face him, “You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

“Yep.”

“I asked you out here because I think - no, I know, I need to be one of the dead to face him. And I asked you to bring your gun so I could use it to shoot myself. And I need you to bury me when it’s over. It can’t be Ollie, it just can’t. He can’t get out here and even if he could, if he knew what I was thinking about doing he’d… he’d go crazy and he wouldn’t let me, but I know, I _know_ it has to be this way. And I know it’s only three feet deep but that’s as far as I could dig, I’m strong, I’m just not used to…” She breaks off and has to swallow a few times to get her rambling under control. “It was just really hard.” She stuffs her hands inside her coat pockets.

Dean’s never been much for words and he finds himself at a complete loss for them now. This is Sam’s domain, Sam’s area of expertise. Dean’s good enough at it in a pinch, but Sam actually _feels_ it all. Dean usually hangs back at this point and lets Sam step in and put a comforting hand on a shoulder, tilt his head just so, make people think they can trust him, tell him anything.

Sam’s not here and while his absence has been scorchingly noticeable all day, Dean can feel the big empty hole of black next to him that screams _’Sam’s would go here’_ , sucking in the air from the night, creating a Sam-shaped void in the landscape.

In the second between his exhale and next inhale, Dean can see that Sam-shaped nullity stretch out in four dimensions, taking on length, shape, width and _time_. Endless time unfolding in front of him without Sam. Cross-sections of life appearing before him with side notes saying _’and here is where Sam should have been, here is where he would have been, this is what it feels like without Sam, this is what it is to hunt without Sam, this is how you eat breakfast without Sam, this is how you sleep without Sam, this is how you drive without Sam.’_

“Are you going to try to stop me?”

Her voice is crystal clear in the night. Sharp-edged against his ears.

“You really think it will work?” He doesn’t know what he wants her to say. His internal monologue is a split chord. The high-pitched tones of _if she’s not sure, I won’t let her do this, if she doesn’t know if it will work, I_ can’t _let her do this._ Versus the low, resonant vibration that is _Samsamsamsamsammy_.

She nods, quick and sure. “I do. I don’t know how to explain it. I just… I know this is the best way to get Sam back and then I can finish it.”

“What about that drink your brother concocted?” If he’s in, he’s all in, and there can be no fuck ups.

“I don’t think I’ll need it if I’m dead, but I drank it anyway.”

Last ditch effort. The old ‘College Try.’ “I’m not generally in the business of creating ghosts.”

She huffs dryly. “No, I guess not.” Her eyes turn wary. “But if I’m successful, you’ll leave the hotel alone, won’t you? I can keep the ghosts under control, I can keep them happy.”

She gets jumpy watching him.

“C’mon, it’ll be like my dying wish.” Her tone is sarcastic, but her eyes are wide and worried for his response.

He thinks about it carefully before speaking. “If you’re successful, we’ll leave.”

“Good,” she says.

“But,” he warns, eyes serious, “We’ll be keeping an ear to the ground and if we hear one thing about this place, just one tourist who gets hurt, we’ll be back and we’ll clear the place out.”

She nods solemnly. “I can live with that,” she answers and then frowns. “Or I guess die with that.” She sticks her hand out. “Deal?”

He regards her outstretched hand for a moment and then slides his palm into hers, her fingers cold and rough against his skin. “Deal.”

They shake on it, ridiculously pumping their hands once before they each pull back. She opens her mouth to say something, closes it, opens it again and then frowns.

“What?” he asks.

“Should I shoot myself in the head or the heart? I don’t really know a lot about it so I was kinda hoping…”

“Are you asking for advice on how to shoot yourself?”

“Pretty much.”

“Well, I guess it depends on what you’re looking for.”

She nods like this is sage advice. Like Dean is a refrigerator sales man and is trying to help her figure out what the best unit for her would be. And truth be told, now that this night’s ending is out in the open, Dean finds they’ve both strangely relaxed into it.

“Well, I have this sense that it needs to be…” she gestures her hands around, “like an event, I guess. I don’t know how to explain it. I mean, I’m out here ‘cause I don’t want Ollie to have to deal with my body, but also, I get this feeling that I can’t just go quietly into the night. So I thought about pills or slitting my wrist, but I feel like… I feel like I need some ‘oomph’ behind it.”

“Well, if you shoot yourself in the heart, your might not die right away. I mean, your heart will likely be damaged, but it could take a while to bleed out. Headshot is usually a quicker kill.”

She nods like it’s fascinating and Dean has the impression she would take notes if she had a pen.

“And your gun is strong enough to kill me?”

“Fuck yeah, I kill all kinds of shit with it.”

“Okay,” she nods. “I don’t think I need to linger, so I probably don’t want to go with the heart. Plus, what if I miss? I just think the brain is my best shot.” She winces. “No pun intended.”

“I, uh… You know if you really don’t want to or you can’t… I can uh…”

“No!” she says quickly. “Jesus, it’s bad enough I’ve dragged you out here and have to borrow your gun and then have you bury me. Fuck, no. I can do it.”

“It’s just, I’ve shot a lot of things.” He shrugs. “I’m good at it.”

“No, seriously. I hardly know you.”

That strikes them both as ludicrously funny and they each let out an uneasy chuckle.

He takes his colt 1911 out of his waistband and holds it out. “Do you know how to shoot a gun?” he asks gently.

“I’ve shot one before. We have one at the hotel for safety. I’ve never had to use it, but I know how to shoot it.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“All the ghosts I’ve ever seen are wearing the clothes they died in. Is that what you’ve seen too?”

“Yeah.”

She nods and then takes her coat off, shivering at the cool air. Even in the dark, he can make out the symbols that Oliver drew on her arms earlier. “It’s bulky and when I wear it for too long, it pulls at one of my arms,” she explains.

He stares at her. “Is that what your wearing?”

“What?” she asks looking down at her outfit. She’s wearing a grey t-shirt that has faded black lettering on it proclaiming _‘Bark in the Park Dogwalking - We’ll make you bow-wow!’_ and yoga pants. “This is one of my favorite t-shirts and these pants are comfortable.”

“Uh, no, it’s fine. It’s just… usually most ghosts appear in more… menacing or sedate clothing.”

“Well, I won’t be most ghosts.”

“No, I guess not.”

He hands her the gun with the safety on and he can tell by the way she takes it that she’s surprised by the weight. She holds it with both hands, clearly not used to holding a weapon and her fingers fumble slightly before she finds the safety and releases it.

Although she does remember to keep it pointed at the ground for which Dean is grateful. Her hands are shaking and he’s suddenly worried he’ll get shot in the leg by accident.

She carefully steps down into her makeshift grave, putting her below his usual line of sight and he has to tip his head down to see her. She licks her lips nervously and takes a deep breath.

“You’ve shot things before? In the head?”

“Yep. It’s generally the best way to kill something. Quick. Efficient.”

She bobs her head and lets out another shaky breath. She’s shivering in the cold without her coat. Her hands shake and the glare of the flashlight bounces off the nickel-plate of the colt. She glances quickly up at him.

“Um. Could you turn around?” She flaps one of her hands at him.

“Pardon me?”

“I just don’t think I can do this with you watching me.”

“Are you _shy_ about shooting yourself in the face?”

She’s about to say ‘no’, when he sees it cross her face that the answer is yes.

“Yeah, I kinda think I am.”

He holds back a sigh of annoyance and though it goes against every instinct ever drilled in his body to turn his back on someone with a weapon, he slowly turns around, giving her his back.

“Thanks.”

It’s so quiet and low, he almost doesn’t hear it.

It’s silent again in the dark night. He looks up to the sky and takes in the view of the stars. It’s cold, but he’s not uncomfortable. While it’s not pleasant, he’ll take feeling cold over a fair number of things; pain, nausea, fear. Cold is just… cold.

When the shot does come, he’s surprised by how loud it is. He actually flinches a little which is not something he’s done at the sound of a gunshot in years. But there was something about waiting for it. About waiting for the sound in the dark, in the quiet, without being in the middle of fighting for his life that left him slightly open to be startled by it. When he turns around, he’s startled again to see Farrah right in front of him. She still looks mostly the same. Although slightly… thinner. Not in body but in substance. He can’t see through her, but she’s not all together solid either.

“You’ll have to go get your gun back,” she says and she points.

Her body has fallen over on its side at an awkward angle, legs bent funnily, one arm twisted underneath her and one hand still clutching the Colt. Thankfully, her brain is exit wound down, and he can only make out the small entry wound on her temple and the faintest burn from the heat of the muzzle.

“Did it hurt?” he blurts out before he can stop himself.

“Yes, but just for a moment and then… it didn’t.”

He hops down into the hole and starts prying her death grip from the Colt. He winces as he feels her pinky finger break.

“It’s okay, I don’t mind.”

She’s nearly on top of him as she speaks, having crawled ( _ghosted?_ ) into her grave with him and he jumps back slightly.

“Jesus! Personal space.”

She looks at him strangely. “Sorry, it doesn’t seem like I’m all that close.”

“Trust me, you are,” he says firmly.

She takes a step back. “It seems different on this side. I get now how they could crowd around me when I’m eating. It doesn’t feel… close.”

She pushes herself up on the earth and climbs out of the grave. He gets his gun free from her hand and follows suit.

“Shouldn’t you be… I don’t know. Like drifty or … just less alive-like?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know how else to be.” Her eye is caught by the shovel and she heads over to where it lays and picks it up.

“I didn’t know I would be able to pick stuff up. I wasn’t sure.” She turns back to him. “I can fill it in.”

“Naw,” he says, stepping over and taking the shovel easily from her. “You dug it, you shouldn’t have to fill it in too.”

The both look down at her body in the dirt hole.

“I kinda thought it would have made a bigger mess,” she says.

He snorts getting a shovel full of dirt. “It did, but you’re lying on it.”

“Oh.”

He tosses the first shovel full down. “Sorry if that was, uh… insensitive.”

She stares at him. “I just shot myself in the head so I could fight a Sumerian God. Do I seem like the sensitive type to you?”

“Guess not.”

***

The trip back to the hotel is shorter, although just as quiet as the trip out. Dean sets his own pace on the way back, following the trail of footsteps and Farrah keeps up, her legs and feet moving, but not making a sound on the snow. She follows Dean back, and it’s weird how quiet it is. He knows she’s behind him, but he has the strange urge to keep turning around to check on her. He wonders if she could just flit herself back to the hotel without having to make the trip, but she seems content enough to walk behind him so he doesn’t say anything.

When they get back, a fair number of lights are on and Oliver’s at the front door, waiting.

“Jesus fucking _Christ_ where have you _been_?” he says as soon as they are close enough. He comes out on the steps, his crutches sliding in the cold.

“Ollie -” Farrah begins.

“It’s one thing to shut me out, Fay, but this? All of a sudden it’s like you were _gone_. It’s still like you’re gone. What the hell are you doing?” he frowns. “And where is your coat?”

“Ollie, I…” she fumbles for the words. She takes the last couple of steps up and stands in front of Oliver.

“What…” he breathes, moving closer to her, looking at her carefully. “What did you do?”

She doesn’t answer him, but stares back.

“No,” Oliver says suddenly, shaking his head. “No, you didn’t. You wouldn’t. You couldn’t.” His head moves back and forth.

She raises her hand and places it on his shoulder.

And then glides it through the flesh and bone, slipping out the other side.

Dean wants to leave. He wants to leave the two of them in this moment alone. He doesn’t want to watch as Oliver’s face crumples as the full impact of what Farrah’s done hits him. He doesn’t want to see them both start to cry, he doesn’t want to stand there and do nothing as Oliver’s crutches slide out from underneath him and he falls to the ground with a painful thud, his bad leg giving out beneath him.

It takes him completely by surprise when Oliver launches himself up from the floor and throws himself at Dean, cursing and shouting, grappling at him, trying to wrestle with him. He’s yelling nearly unintelligibly that Dean did this to his sister, that he outright killed her. Oliver’s upper body is shockingly strong; likely from supporting himself for years on the crutches and from rage and grief. Dean struggles not to hurt him, but still keep himself from getting slugged.

“Ollie, stop,” shouts Farrah and her voice causes the walls of the hotel to shake. “Stop!”

She reaches out and touches her brother’s neck with her ghostly fingers and Oliver jolts like he’s been electrocuted and stumbles back.

Dean regains his footing and watches as Ollie crumples to the floor again with Farrah crouched beside him.

“What did you do to him?” Dean asks.

She shakes her head. “Nothing. I just showed him what happened out there. So he wouldn’t blame you.”

Oliver looks up at Fay, betrayal and hurt in his eyes. “How could you? How _could_ you?”

“Ollie…”

“No. Don’t you dare fucking tell me it was the only way because it wasn’t. You were going to go in that room and get Sam out and then we were just going to continue on like we had been.”

“You know that couldn’t have happened. It was getting stronger, Ollie, and I can stop it like this.”

“Or we could have _left_. We could have left this goddamn place and never looked back,” he hisses.

“I couldn’t do that. You know that. The ghosts need me.”

“The ghosts, the ghosts, the ghosts. I don’t give a shit about them. _I_ need you.”

“I… I had to do this. I had to, Ollie.” She reaches out for him and he scampers backward on the floor, out of her reach.

“Don’t… just don’t.” He pushes himself to his feet, eyes darting around for his crutches. He leans over to get one and Dean picks the other one off the floor and hands it to him. He snatches it roughly out of Dean’s hand.

“And you just _let_ her. You didn’t even try to stop her.”

Dean doesn’t look away, remains silent under Oliver’s glare.

“Don’t put this on him, Ollie,” Farrah says quietly. “You saw what happened, you know it was all me.”

Oliver doesn’t turn away from Dean. “You’d do anything to get your brother back, wouldn’t you? Well, I feel about my sister the same way you feel about your brother. And I…” His throat closes over the words and he turns away from Dean, staring at the floor. He starts to shuffle away and Farrah goes to follow him.

“Don’t,” he says, not turning around. “I can’t even look at you right now.”

Dean catches the looks of shock and hurt that flash over Farrah’s face as she watches her brother walk away from her.

“I thought… I thought I could make him understand,” she says, her voice soft and low. “I thought that if he… If I could just… that he would…”

Her otherness is showing more strongly. When she cries, it’s not saline, but fat drops of silver that trail lustrous lines down her face and blinking out of existence as they leave her chin. He hates to say it, hates to be the one to have to say it, but he knows she needs a purpose now, and he needs his brother back.

“Farrah, it’s nearly sunrise.”

She looks over at him, her eyes shot through black with silver marble streaks again, like the other night and he remembers that, thankfully for Sammy’s sake, she’s probably not human anymore. The human part of her is buried in a cold, shallow grave of her own making, waiting for spring to start rotting.

In front of him is what was left behind.

“Yes,” she agrees. “Yes of course. Sunrise.”

She looks up the staircase, up to the brown writing on the wall that still proclaims _Welcome, Sam Winchester_. She considers it for a moment and then waves her hand in front of her slowly, like she’s practicing. Then with a squaring of her shoulders, she waves her hand again, and the lettering dries out, crackling as it does and starts to flake off the wall. With a puff of air from her lips, the remainder of the words blow away into dust.

It takes him a second to follow her when she starts up the stairs, stuck staring at the now pristine wall as he is. But follow her he does, up the long staircase, past the landing and then up the second set. She pauses as she walks, nodding her head every now and then and each time she does, one of the ghosts blinks into existence and falls in step behind her.

Dean can see them all now, as she pauses outside the door to room 43. There are over 50 of them, as she estimated. Young, old, big and small. Ancient and fresh. He can make out at least six different styles of clothing from 3 centuries. They crowd into the hallway, pressing in behind her, taking up the space around her. It’s as cold in the hallway now as it was outside, with all of them clustered together and Dean’s glad he’s still got his jacket on.

Farrah reaches up and runs her fingers lightly over the brass numbers three times, and the ‘snick’ as the lock pulls back is audible. She places her hand against the door and pauses, turning to Dean.

“I don’t know how long it will be. I will get Sam before I do… anything else.”

He’s at a loss for words and manages a curt nod.

“I’m sorry to ask, but I’ve one more favor.”

He stiffens. He’s completely unprepared and with Sam in the balance, he’s afraid. He’s afraid he would agree to anything, make any deal she asks.

“If he wants to leave, will you take Ollie down the mountain?”

He nearly sags in relief. “Yeah,” he manages finally. “Of course.”

“Thanks.”

The handle turns easily under her fingers, door creaking as it swings open. She takes a deep breath and he can hear her start to recite under breath.

 _”There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile, he found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile. He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse. And they all lived together in a little crooked house.”_

Her steps are cautious and careful as she enters and as she looks up and around, Dean realizes she sees something very different from the plain, worn hotel room that he sees.

Standing just on the threshold of the door, when it slams shut, it nearly clips him in the nose. He blinks in surprise and stumbles back a few steps. He’s not sure what he’s waiting for as he stares at the door.

Something.

Anything.

When water starts pouring down the wood in thick, stringy rivulets he thinks that he should have clarified his desire. He wanted something _meaningful_ to happen, something that would let him know what was going on. As the liquid runs down the door and seeps into the carpet beneath his feet, he hears shuffling behind him and he turns to find Oliver making his frantically down the hall.

“Where is she?”

Dean points to the door and Oliver sags. “I thought… I hoped she would wait. I wanted…”

Oliver’s words are cut off by a large groan from the wood of the door. It bows out slightly, impossibly, from its frame, splinters cracking. Water seeps through the cracks in the grain, spurting from the sides; foul smelling and brackish.

There’s a loud thump against the door, as though something slammed into it from the other side.

Nails scrape at the wood, scratching at the door.

“Did this happen before?” Dean ask roughly.

Oliver shakes his head. “No, when she was in before, it was just quiet. Until my dad came out, there was nothing.”

There’s another loud sound of something large and soft hitting the wood and flecks of water spray off, covering Oliver and Dean.

“Can you tell what’s going on in there? What’s she thinking?”

Again Oliver shakes his head. “I told you, when she’s in there, it’s like she’s gone. And now that she’s…” his voice breaks off suddenly. “I don’t get anything.”

The letters start appearing slowly on the door at first, then come faster, as if whoever is doing it is learning how it works.

 _S-A-M - B-A-S-E-M-E-N-T_

Dean takes off running before the last part of the ‘T’ finishes.

***

“I told you there were ways of getting you back in here.”

“And I told you I’m not a little girl anymore.”

He smiles at her, sharp, disjointed pointy teeth, and it seems impossible that they would fit in his mouth like that. When he steps forward, she can hear a soft slithering sound as he moves, bits and pieces of himself trailing behind him.

She forces herself still and he crowds into her space.

“You’ll love it here. The dead will bow down to you and you’ll forget you ever lived at all.”

His breath is cold against face and she realizes all she feels is the cold. She should be afraid, she should be terrified, but she’s not.

“Maybe,” she answers. “But you won’t be here to see it.”

She lunges for him.

***

There’s more water now and, like some kind of sore or wound has burst open, it’s brown and sludgy, full of slime and hard bits that make his stomach churn. It’s spilled over the edge of the pool and is six inches deep, making it hard for Dean to walk without turning his gait into a strange kind of hop-skip. The sound of rushing water fills his ears, canceling out his voice as he calls out Sam’s name. The water is choppy and rough, currents pulling at his ankles as he moves.

He sees an arm.

He’s pushing through the water, sloshing and splashing around, churning up more grub from the bottom as he slip-slides his way over. The water is as cold and as frigid as before. He grabs Sam’s arm and pulls him closer and the tips of Sam’s fingers are blue.

He falls to his knees in the water, cradling Sam close, slapping him on the face lightly at first and then one good hard crack when he gets no response. Sam’s eyes flutter open and immediately lock onto Dean.

“Hey buddy, I’m here, I got you,” Dean says, a smile breaking across his face. Sam’s stiff fingers come up to clutch at Dean like he can’t believe Dean is there; a painful and hard grip that will leave fingermarks on Dean for days. Sam’s lips move wordlessly but no sound escapes.

“I know, you’re out,” Dean soothes, scared by the feral and frightened look in Sam’s eyes. Sam shuts them tightly for a moment and then opens them again to find Dean.

“Would it help if I pinched you?” Dean says fondly.

Dean thinks Sam might be about to say something, but a horrible keening noise cuts him off. It cuts into Dean’s middle ear like a knife, sending a spike of pain into his skull and without thinking he covers Sam’s ears, tucking his own head to the side.

The water in the deep end of the pool starts to swirl and eddy, pulling itself downward into a quick spiral, giving off a low sucking sound. Dean hauls Sam to shaky feet, bracing him up when Sam’s legs want to give out.

The whirlpool deepens impossibly; farther and further down than the pool is physically capable of and when Dean looks down the center of it, he can’t make out the bottom. The basement is filled with the harsh sucking sound, like a seal has been broken and the water is being vacuumed out.

The walls start to shake and for a moment, everything in the room _tilts_.

“Time to go.” Dean’s voice is harsh as he drags Sam with him toward the stairs. At the foot of them, he looks up and blinks twice as he watches them split sideways, into two staircases, as though he’s wearing a pair of glasses with two different lenses. He puts his feet out in front of him and is thankful when it connects with solid matter below. He pulls Sam along with him, dripping wet and sluggish.

A rumble builds from below and he turns back just in time to see the whirlpool turn itself inside out and upside down, spiraling up toward the ceiling with a burst of liquid and debris.

The keening sound from before returns, and Dean wonders if he’s listening to the sound of Farrah dying or if this is the death knell of a Sumerian god. Something dark and nebulous is swirling in the inverted spiral; thick, black and tangled. It stretches and pulses; Dean can’t take his eyes off it, convinced if he turns away, it will whip out from the column with a wet smack and grab at him and Sam. He inches back, not sure if moving faster will draw attention to them or not.

A tendril lashes out and licks at them and Dean pushes Sam backward. Just as quickly, something pale and white follows it.

A hand. A human hand, clutching at the slippery intruder and digging in mercilessly. Dean squints but all he can make out is the fingers and part of a wrist before it yanks back sharply, pulling the creature with it.

He pushes against Sam’s back and they stumble up the stairs, nearly falling into the main hallway and by the time they reach the grand staircase, Sam is moving under his own power.

The walls of the hotel are flickering in and out of solidity, like they are being pulled back and forth between two dimensions. Fluid leaks down in fat rivulets, pooling onto the hardwood floor, running down the carpeted staircase. Their feet make loud squishing sounds as the step down on the carpet, pulling themselves up by the railing. Light bulbs pop and shatter, raining down glass and sparks, a sharp shard cutting across Dean’s cheek pulling a hiss of surprise from him. On the first floor, planks of hardwood snap up, the moulding halfway up the wall curls off in a wave, pulsing down the hall, reaching the end and coming back again, like a slinky gone berserk.

Dean stops as he sees Oliver sitting calmly outside room 43, the small area around him untouched by destruction. Glass and debris rain down from above and it all stops before it reaches Oliver. He’s sitting cross-legged staring solemnly at the black streams of water running down the door. Oliver’s lips are moving slightly and it only takes Dean seconds to recognize he’s chanting Farrah’s rhyme.

He feels the tremble start softly, deep in the foundation of the hotel and it works its way up through the brick, stone, wood and plaster, until the entire building is shaking and shearing under the pressure. Screws pop loose from fixtures and the entire floor warps up in a strange undulating wave and Dean has serious misgivings about not getting the hell out of the building with Sam when he had the chance instead of coming upstairs.

And then it just stops.

There’s a loud groan; a shift and a slight drop as the building _settles_ and Dean’s not sure if he’s relieved or seriously freaked out. A drop in pressure makes his ears pop painfully and sends a quick flash of vertigo over his body as his ear protests against it.

The handle on the door starts to turn and the three men stare at it in painful silence. Dean feels Sam’s fingers clutch at the back of his coat, ready to pull him and start running if necessary. Oliver stands shakily, crutches off to the side, out of reach.

The door swings open and she’s standing there, horrible and lovely. Silver streaks her dark hair, her eyes shot through black with marble streaks, skin pale with gray veins forking randomly over her cheeks, forehead, chin and nose.

Dean takes a step back, pushing Sam further behind him as she steps out of the room. Her ridiculous outfit from before, when she shot herself, is replaced by high-necked dark silver dress that trails to the floor, covering up every inch of her skin but her hands and her face. Her eyes trail over Sam and Dean blankly and then stop when they reach Oliver. Her lips form his name and she tilts her head like it’s a question, but she does not speak. Oliver nods.

“Yes, Fay. Ollie.”

She blinks three times and snaps back to her human appearance. Eyes dark grey, skin pale but clear, hair solid brown again, comical t-shirt and yoga pants. Her eyes flick back over to Sam and Dean, and Dean can’t help but hold a hand out to stop her from coming forward.

“Is it gone?” Dean asks roughly.

She blinks again as though she has to think about his question. “Yes.” She pauses and ruminates some more. “I’m in charge of the dead now.”

***

Dean stuffs the last of his things into the duffel bag, eyes carefully sweeping over the room for any stray items. Satisfied he zips it up and slings it over his shoulder.

Sam is outside keeping Oliver company. Oliver’s barely spoken to them since his sister came out of room 43 looking decidedly dead and inhuman. Although Dean knows the twins had an entire conversation without saying a word out loud. It ended when Oliver turned away from Farrah and asked if he could go down the mountain with Sam and Dean. They immediately agreed, Oliver went to pack and Farrah…

Farrah just disappeared.

They waited in the foyer while Oliver went to pack and Dean asked Sam what he remembered from room 43. Sam turned away and when he finally did speak, his voice was quiet.

“It was like that line, from Francis’ journal. _I dream of a thing stretched out before me, vast and horrible. I have no past and no future._ ” Sam squinted into the morning sun streaming through the small window, letting it fall full on his face for a few moments. “I… there was no… I’ve been scared before. We’ve seen too much, done too much for me not to have been scared at some point. But I never… I was so… the desolation was…” he swallowed hard. “And then I saw something, something awful coming for me and I couldn’t… I didn’t know it was her. I thought it was there to finish me and all I could think was, ‘thank God.’”

He turned from Dean and went outside to stand fully in the sunshine and Dean had headed up stairs to gather their things.

Dean’s not surprised to find her in the hallway when he makes his way down the grand staircase, her ghostly shape peering out the small window next to the door, watching her brother as he sits silently stretched out in the backseat of the Impala. She turns as she hears Dean coming and her eyes flicker strangely between normal and _other_ for a moment before finally settling on ‘human.’ Sam pokes his head in through the door and seeing Dean and Farrah steps inside.

“Ready?” Sam asks Dean and the older brother nods. They turn to Farrah.

“Thank you for taking Oliver,” she says.

Dean still finds it strange to be conversing so easily with a ghost and while Sam doesn’t seem to fear Farrah outright, he gives her a wide berth.

“Yeah, no problem. How did you guys leave it?” asks Dean.

She looks away from him, eyes tightening. “He said he needs to get away and I’m happy for him. This was never… he was never meant to be here. Not like me.” She turns back to Dean. “He’ll come back. Either when he’s ready or when he’s old and grey, or when he’s dead and gone. And I’ll be here.”

“You’ll, uh, be okay?” Sam questions.

She smiles. “Yes. We’ll be fine.” She jerks her head to the space behind her and when they look over her shoulder, all the ghosts of Cross Creek are standing on the staircase watching them.

“That’s not creepy at all,” Dean mutters under his breath and she laughs.

“I know it’s not something you can promise, but if you can, when you find ghosts or troubled spirits, draw this for them.”

She snaps her fingers and a piece of paper materializes in the air and floats down to land on Sam’s shoulder. He takes the paper and gives it the once over. He recognizes it as the rosette of Inanna, an eight pointed star.

“If they concentrate on it, I can bring them here,” she continues. “Give them someplace to go, take care of them.”

Sam carefully folds the paper and tucks it into his coat pocket. Dean’s look is not quite suspicious, but it’s close.

“We’ll be keeping an eye out,” Dean says firmly, eyes darting over her shoulder to the ghosts standing behind her.

“They won’t cause any trouble. They never have. _I_ won’t cause any trouble,” she says easily. “And if I do, well, you know where my bones are. Salt and burn, isn’t that what you said?”

Dean nods and he can tell by Sam’s face that he’s thinking the same thing. Both of them doubt salting and burning would have any effect on Farrah. She’s not just some ghost.

Even if she seems to think she is.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I kinda hope to never see you again,” she says with a wry smile.

That steals a huff of amusement from both Sam and Dean.

“Yeah, the feeling’s mutual,” replies Dean as he and Sam make their way toward the door.

Farrah turns to Sam. “But I haven’t forgotten my promise. And when you’re ready, I will tell you what’s on the other side.”

Sam’s eyes fill up with nerdy anticipation as his face pales with shock. Dean fights the urge to push Sam out the door with as much force as he can muster. In the end, he simply follows Sam out, adjusting his duffel on his shoulder as they make their way down the steps. They can just make out Oliver’s head over the top of the driver’s seat. His head pointedly turned away from the hotel.

From Farrah.

Dean tosses his duffel in the trunk as Sam slides into the passenger side of the Impala, saying something low and quiet to Oliver who shakes his head and doesn’t look up. Dean looks back at the hotel one last time. Farrah’s ghostly silhouette is framed by the door, her body slightly translucent now and Dean can start to make out the shapes of other ghosts drifting around behind her. She raises a hand in a hesitant wave and before he can think about it, he waves back. The door drifts shut slowly, and she doesn’t get out of the way, but instead lets it pass right through her, finally obscuring her from view.

It’s the first time they’ve ever driven away from a place they knew was haunted without salting or burning anything.

He has the strange feeling it won’t be the last.

As he stares at the door, an eight pointed rosette starts to carve itself deeply into the wood, perfectly, methodically until it’s complete.  
[](http://s989.photobucket.com/albums/af12/zoemathemata/Cross%20Creek/?action=view&current=ishtar_star.jpg)


End file.
